I apologize for interrupting the member, but pursuant to standing order 50(c), I am now required to interrupt the proceedings and announce that there have been six and a half hours of debate on the motion for second reading of this bill. This debate will therefore be deemed adjourned unless the government House leader directs the debate to continue.

Interjection.

Further debate?

I’m confident that once this bill is passed, the provincial government, municipal government and private sector will be able to work together—all of them—for the benefit of our residents, and they will provide the best service available for our residents.

It’s always an honour to speak in this House on behalf of the good people of Scarborough Southwest. I’m privileged to be entrusted with the support and the responsibility they have given me to advocate for issues such as transit, and always a pleasure to speak to anything to do with transit. If there’s a way that we can improve transit across our province, and especially in my community, I’m always eager to be part of that conversation, so I really appreciate the opportunity, Speaker, to be able to be a part of this debate.

Today, we are debating Bill 131, and there are two specific schedules that, on the front of it, it looks good to see that we want integration, and we want to be able to have the municipality have the ability to do the work they need to do and make sure that we have transit that is integrated between the different systems. When I saw that, I thought about when I was a student and I used to volunteer with an organization called Power Unit Youth Organization. It was all the way in Markham, and I lived in Scarborough—I still live in Scarborough—and I would go from my home, sometimes walk or take the bus to Warden station, and then I would take the bus from there to go to Warden and Steeles. If I took the 68 bus that doesn’t go past Warden and Steeles, then I’d have to either change bus and pay a new fare to go through the other side to go to Markham Civic Centre, or take the 68B which would then ask you to pay another fare once you get to Steeles. It would be so frustrating because I didn’t really make any money at that time. Not only was I volunteering, but you’re paying two different fares just to get to a meeting with a bunch of young people who were trying to make a difference.

We used to organize this night market at Markham Civic Centre which was filled with over 100,000 people, and as young, eager volunteers, we were so proud of ourselves and we’re still so proud of ourselves to be able to do something like this that brought the community together. It was a Hong Kong-style night market that brought the community together.

But I know a lot of people relied on transit as well to get to that event, and one of the things I always thought about was, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had integrated transit so I could bring in more people from Scarborough, more people from across the city to come to this wonderful event organized by young people who are eager to make a difference in their community?” It really added on and contributed to the diversity of our province.

So today, when I see this, I’m thinking, “Oh, this is awesome. I’m glad to see that the government is finally thinking about it.” It’s not like we’ve had decades to see the problems, have experts tell us about the solutions that we need and to be able to understand and know that there are ways that we can fix it. But unfortunately, we did not have the political will. There are times we did come up with solutions; unfortunately, they were not solutions where the government wanted to take the responsibility.

The member from Toronto Centre talked about how there was responsibility that was uploaded to the people who had to pay extra to have that integration to be able to go from place to place, whether they’re volunteering or to school or to their workplaces. But the onus was on the people to pay a little bit more. Honestly, this is the reason why we have a transit system the way we do across our province right now and especially in this city.

When I saw this, the first question I asked was, “Have there been people who were consulted in this?” I know some members talked about municipalities, and I really hope that this government consults with municipalities when they go into it; it hasn’t been always the case. But we know that there is one group of people who this government failed to consult with.

When it comes to transit, or when it comes to anything, you want to be able to consult with the people who are in charge of that job, right? When it comes to transit, you have workers who are actually driving the buses and the trains in the TTC: the ATU workers who are working so hard, day and night, to make sure we are getting from place to place. Unfortunately, they haven’t been consulted. There hasn’t been a dialogue to understand how they will be impacted.

I have so many questions when I look at this bill because not only is it downloading the responsibility to municipalities; it doesn’t even clarify whether these agreements will impact collective rights and labour unions and how it will impact the integration, how the whole system will even work out, because you’re not even going into the weeds of it. It is very problematic because we know what some of the regulations have done when it comes to ministers taking on the power, once again, to do some of the work that they need to do. It adds on these provisions that actually don’t clarify what the impact will be on our collective agreements.

Honestly, Speaker, I don’t have a lot of trust in this government when it comes to labour rights, when it comes to workers’ rights, because we have seen the really shameless record when it comes to workers’ rights and the way this government has tried to trample upon the rights of so many workers across this province, whether it was education, whether it’s injured workers, and now we’re talking about transit workers. I really hope that the government will go back to the drawing board and make sure that they’re actually understanding the impact that this will have on collective bargaining and what it means for transit workers who are actually operating the entire system.

Now I want to talk about the way this bill actually downloads a lot of responsibility. On the front of it, you see how it allows municipalities, with the consent of the minister, to impose a transit station charge, which the government is calling “station contribution fee”—wonderful title as usual; the government comes up with very fancy names—on new developments within a designated area around a proposed new GO Transit station. Honestly, I’m a little confused here. I really hope someone helps us understand. Here we are talking about housing; just a few months ago, the government took away an actual profit that the municipalities made from development charges. You took that away, and we’ve got municipalities that are now having a really difficult time dealing with their budgets. Then, here you are saying, “Okay, we’re going to have these development charges that the municipalities will impose.” So, it’s the responsibility of the municipality to work with the development and make sure that there are these charges.

Not only are you opening up this whole can of worms for public-private partnership, which we know does not work, but also the fact that you’re actually once again doing exactly what previous Conservative governments have done, which is put the responsibility for transit—not only about operation; now you’re putting the actual building of transit on municipalities. That is a very dangerous path that we’re going forward, because the municipalities, especially in Toronto—the city of Toronto is struggling to keep up with their transit costs. We do not have the ability to build and operate. We need the provincial government to take onus, take ownership and do that work.

The other thing that I found really interesting was how this bill actually misses a lot of the things that we could have been doing with transit.

We’re talking about integration. We’re talking about development fees, but it doesn’t have anything to do with providing the funding that’s necessary. That’s the reason why I kept asking questions to my colleagues on both sides of the benches about operating funding, because that is one of the fundamental problems that we’re facing with TTC and with transit across the board.

When we talk about people who drive and take the TTC, the reason a lot people, in Scarborough, for example—and we’ve got a few of our colleagues here from Scarborough; people don’t have the option to take the TTC in Scarborough. If you live in one community in Scarborough and go to university or college in another neighbourhood within that region, you have to sometimes take two or three buses just to go from one location to another. It is unbelievable.

My constituents in my community cannot go from one part of my riding to my office with one bus. After that, they have to walk. That’s how ridiculous, that’s how unfriendly and inaccessible transit is.

Oh, and on the thought of accessibility, actually, before I forget, it’s fascinating how just months ago, this government unfortunately voted against my bill on transit accessibility. Guess what? Just the other day, we got the report that I think 12 stations within out city will not meet the deadline to be accessible.

Guess what this government told me, Speaker? In this House, it’s on record: They said they’re not going to vote for this bill because it’s redundant, because we’re already working on it, that they already plan to be accessible and meet the deadline.

You had 20 years. You had 20 years to put an elevator at Warden station. We still don’t have an elevator at a station where so many people have to go to a completely different station and then take a bus and then, come back to their neighbourhood. Like, how are we expecting people to operate, get around, and do the work that they need to do, especially people who are faced with disability? It is impossible. You’re making life so much harder for people.

It’s so ridiculous. I was actually disheartened when I saw the questions that were being asked to my colleague from Hamilton who has an accessibility device and who has a really tough time coming from Hamilton to here and then getting around the city. It is extremely difficult and I was so disheartened to see the type of questions that were being asked, because she herself knows the struggle that she faces. No one needs to tell her that. She faces it every single day.

I feel for so many of my communities. One group I have been talking to for a couple of years now: a lot of small businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people who lost their businesses on the Eglinton line. This is a conversation that’s completely ignored in all of the legislation, especially to do with transit.

For so many years—it’s been over 12 years with a budget of over $12 million now for the Eglinton LRT. Here we are, finding dysfunctional stations and ripping apart things. It made me look into what Gilles Bisson, my colleague from Timmins, used to tell me about, back in the day, what took place in the 1990s when they proposed and actually had shovels in the ground. They were digging up. Eglinton subway was supposed to take place. It was unbelievable. He would tell me stories—and I miss him dearly—about how we would have debates in this House. And an NDP government actually proposed, implemented, and started doing the work to build an Eglinton subway. I’m proud of these guys for doing that work at that time.

Guess what happened? When the government changed, then-Premier Mike Harris came and, literally—literally—filled the dug-up holes and put cement on it already. Now, here we are, on the Eglinton line, trying to put transit.

You know, as I was preparing these notes—we have our placement student, Tien, who is here today, and he was looking through the bill and we were talking about the briefing notes. He said to me, and this is incredible, that he was seven years old when we started building the Eglinton LRT. He is now 19 years old. He honestly doesn’t feel that hope, and I don’t feel that hope, as to when we will actually have the line built, when we will actually get it operating and the cost and whether it will actually happen.

And then, what we hear—this morning we asked this question to the transportation minister about the cost as well as the leadership that’s in Metrolinx. This is actually fascinating, because yesterday the CEO of Metrolinx, Phil Verster, stated that there is no set deadline for the completion of this project. This is the person who is in charge, by the way. After we’re more than five years delayed from the deadline, and there is no clear timeline, it is a serious concern of accountability, of oversight, not to mention that his salary has had significant increases—if I’m not mistaken, it’s over 700% increase on the CEO’s salary. I don’t even know how anyone on this side, on the government’s side agrees to paying somebody who has failed to do their job over and over and over again.

It also raises the question about the allocated funds and priorities of Metrolinx, especially in the face of so many project delays, so many small businesses that have closed, and the fact that it’s tax dollars. It’s people’s hard-earned dollars that are being spent on these kinds of mistakes made by governments and these kinds of CEOs who do not care about the people of our communities. I don’t even know how that’s justified, the fact that this person still has a job.

Metrolinx officials have acknowledged the existence of deficiencies in this project. Originally, there were 260 identified issues. Now that has decreased over the last, I think, year or two to 225. The pace that they’re going at is unbelievable, not to mention that every time there is an issue with Metrolinx and when we have called members—and we actually had a meeting with Metrolinx staff and I’m grateful to have some of the people who came forward from the Metrolinx team to listen to some of the community members. We had a community meeting, and you will find this fascinating because we actually had the meeting in front of one of the trains going by, and there are community members whose houses are in front of that line. People have been complaining and saying we need some noise barriers, we need something that protects our homes, and we need to be able to sleep at night. We need our kids to be able to do homework and actually function as sane humans because we are just not able to. The noise is there constantly.

When we had the meeting, when we started, no one wanted to believe the community members. As soon as we started the meeting, the trains started going by, so every five minutes we had to stop the meeting and say “Hold on, we can’t hear each other. Okay, now we can hear you.” Honestly, imagine someone’s life on a daily basis, every single day, you face that and you can’t sleep at night and no one believes you until you bring them forward in front of these homes and say this is the reality of so many community members.

Thankfully, the staff members then believed them. We’re hoping that they will take action, but honestly, with the way Metrolinx is functioning, I don’t have that faith. I would really like the Ministry of Transportation and the minister to take responsibility, take ownership, show some leadership—and actually, first show some leadership in Metrolinx, take action when it comes to the CEO and the tax dollars that you are spending. The issue surrounding the Eglinton Crosstown project raises so many concerns about the competence of Metrolinx in managing the future of public transit systems and the fact that there are all these other projects that are coming about.

The member from Agincourt just talked how wonderful it is that we’re going to get three subway stations in Scarborough. God knows how badly I want those three subway stations. I want to have a subway across our city. I want to be able to get on one subway station in downtown Toronto and go to the end of Scarborough and be on the same subway. But, honestly, it is almost imaginary to think about it, because we still do not have any real plans, any real deadlines as to when we’ll actually get a Scarborough subway.

So please stop using Scarborough as this tool, as this name, as a scapegoat or whatever you do. Please stop using us. Stop using Scarborough as a way to get away with your failure, because we’ve had it. We don’t want to hear it. Unless you’re going to give us real results, we don’t want to hear it. And unless you actually provide the operating funding so we have enough buses and not the hand-me-down, the second-hand, the old generation trains—we get the older trains, by the way. We don’t get the new trains. We get the older trains, we get the older buses. That’s what happens. I can’t even explain, Speaker, the way we get treated. It’s so insulting.

Our roads are terrible. We have so many accidents on our roads, so many, and no one wants to come and actually fix the problem. So if you want to applaud yourselves and talk about what you’re doing across the province and use Scarborough, please don’t. Take it and show us real results. Give us the funding so we can actually believe in it. And if you have bills like that that are just fluff but actually don’t have money in them, then I’m very, very cautious to come forward and give you a round of applause, because I don’t see real results in it.

Thank you very much for this time, Speaker. I hope the members were listening.

In question period, often there’s a question that comes and it kind of makes you turn in your seat, and that question came when I learned the fact that there are 59 vice-presidents in Metrolinx, and that they’re either giving a raise to the CEO or considering giving the raise to the CEO.

I thought to myself, “I get it. We’ve got transit shortfalls. We’ve got issues, and this government thought, ‘Do you know what the problem is? We don’t have enough vice-presidents. Do you know what? Maybe if we give the CEO even more money, it’ll bring down the delays and it’ll fix all of the problems.’”

I do notice a difference when it comes to this government dealing with people wearing white collars at a certain stature versus those who wear the blue collars. How did it make you feel hearing that statistic yourself, when you were here in question period this morning?

It’s great that you could read that question that was prepared for you about something, an example that you’re going to give me, because that was a conversation, and you didn’t feel like—through the Speaker—when I talked about Scarborough, that that wasn’t important enough, or about transit. I’m surprised, because all I talked about was Scarborough’s transit.

Speaker, I wish the government actually sat down with ATU and said, “You know what? Here’s the problem: In Brampton, we have these kids who cannot get on the bus, who cannot use the service. So let’s talk about the collective agreement and actually figure out how we can fix this problem.” We could have done that. You could have actually sat down and said, “You know what? We have this proposed legislation that’s going to have this schedule. We’re going to have fare integration. We’re going to have seamless service. Now let’s make sure that the transit workers who are actually driving those buses during the wintertime—which is extremely difficult—let’s have that conversation about how to fix that.”

The fact that it’s so much money being spent—I’m so glad that the member actually gave us an exact amount per kilometre, because that’s what’s happening. Speaker, within that timeline we’ve had multiple jurisdictions around the world that announced, put the shovels in the ground and got the job done.

So yes, we need to do this. We need to provide that integration. We need to focus on the way that we can fix it. But we also need the funding and a real dialogue with the people who are the stakeholders.

But honestly, all jokes aside, Speaker, it’s actually really painful for people in our communities who are struggling: people in the north, for example, who don’t have transit at all. They don’t even have it. They don’t have the infrastructure. They don’t have buses. And then in our community, where we’re still talking about the imaginary three stops, because we don’t have the real subway stations there.

Recently we had the derailment of the Scarborough RT. It’s gone now, and it derailed because it was not maintained and it was expired. We need to be able to talk about these things. We need to be able to understand what actually took place when we had a line that was already getting expired, we knew that for years and years, and yet no one did anything to actually put in a replacement plan or know exactly what will happen when that derailment takes place.

Questions?

Thank you to the member opposite for her 20 minutes of conversation around this bill. I just want to ensure that my question will be focused on Bill 131 and the great changes that we’re making for the people of Ontario in terms of delivering better transit, and I want to give the member an example of how this bill is going to make the average person’s life better as they continue to move on.

When I was a student at York University, you would have to take the bus—the Brampton Züm bus will take you all the way down to York University, but during the winter months, all those poor kids standing at bus stops along the route, that bus can’t pick them up. Why? Because there’s no collective agreement between the TTC and any of the other transit agencies. They are not able to make those agreements because of the law not existing and those amendments not being in place. So think about the students that are going to be standing around this winter if these agreements don’t come into place—and you need to remember that these agreements are already in place when we take a look at the rest of the transit systems that are operating successfully.

So, my question to the member opposite is, would the opposition like to explain how the current updated regulations will benefit Toronto’s regional transit network more than the proposed ones in this act, and can they provide some evidence to support that claim?

Thank you to the member for her presentation.

With respect to this government’s claim that the reason to overturn local transit decision-making has oftentimes been the proposition they’ve put forward, that Metrolinx will build transit on time and on budget—and that’s what they said in 2019. They repeated it in 2020, and now we see the Ontario Line, which is, of course, already quite significantly delayed. But more importantly, it’s actually the most expensive transit project we’ve ever seen, which they like to brag about because it’s a billion dollars per kilometre. It is one of the most expensive projects being delivered around the world, in numbers and magnitude that we’ve never seen before.

My question to you is, how can the people of Ontario trust this government with any legislation that hasn’t gone through consultation with the community, that has no technical review—and that they expect us to just vote for? Can we trust them?

It’s always great to talk about transit, a subject I love.

It was my pleasure to spend three years on the board of Metrolinx. I got to know Phil Verster quite well and I’ll tell you, he is an absolutely outstanding transit leader—absolutely outstanding transit leader. And what we’re doing here as a government is uploading projects that the TTC and the city of Toronto never got around to building. Metrolinx is doing them: Scarborough extension, Ontario Line, Yonge North extension, Eglinton West LRT—$70.5 billion over 10 years, the biggest transit expansion in the history of Ontario.

I would have thought that the opposition would be supportive of that, but I find it kind of—I don’t know; I don’t want to have these words on the record. To sit there and make jokes about all this stuff? We have an outstanding team there. They’re getting stuff done and we look forward to riding those amazing lines with you when they’re up and running, on time and on budget.

And they’ve had five years to fix that.

Speaker, the joke’s actually on us. The people of this province and all of us have been turned into a joke. The fact that a member will get up and say, “It will be delivered on time and on budget,” when just this morning we talked about how it’s not on time and not on budget? I don’t even know how to say that in other languages or how else I could say this. It’s not on time. It’s not on budget.

People’s livelihoods were at stake when those businesses closed down on Eglinton. There were so many businesses that suffered. I talked to a lot of those owners. We made a joke of all of those scenarios and all of those people. So no, that’s nothing to laugh about. The fact that we’re still applauding ourselves—

Before I begin my brief 10 minutes, a fact came to mind, and that was that a fabulous committee Clerk here at Queen’s Park, the committee Clerk for public accounts, where I serve, actually had her first day at the table this week. And so I want to congratulate her on her fabulous work here at Queen’s Park and in committee and congratulate her on her first day at the table.

Today, we’re talking about transit, and I see that it’s a late Thursday afternoon, which is kind of the Friday at Queen’s Park, and temperatures are starting to rise, especially in the last conversation that was there. I think people would be happy to go back to their communities and see their families, especially the ones that have to travel quite a distance. I’m lucky and blessed to be here in Toronto myself and so I get to see my family every night and I know that’s not a reality for many of you and I sympathize always.

I do want to say, before any of you get mad, especially the new ones, and before you point a finger at what we do and don’t support, understand what an omnibus bill is. When a government puts forth legislation, especially in a majority government, they get to pass literally everything and anything. All of it begins with them and ends with them. They pass it or they fail and then it’s up to them. And so what they generally do—to the new members, with respect—is of course they construct omnibus bills which will have things in there which we can support as an opposition and which we may not want to support or can’t support. Perhaps it’s because of battling ideologies or many different reasons, and that’s just the reality of it.

So I get it. There’s a level of theatre in question period when one of the ministers gets up and spins and says what they want to say. But to get frustrated about the fact that we’re not going to support all your bills here, knowing that they’re always going to pass? Come on. Let’s be a little more cordial with each other.

And yes, is it a joke that I point out that there are 59 VPs at Metrolinx? Yes, I was surprised at the top-heavy nature of Metrolinx, to know that there’s literally that many VPs. We have a major project that’s happening through my community. It links my community, a little bit of York Centre—the minister’s community—and a lot of the Premier’s community, my neighbouring riding. It was scheduled to have its construction done by end of year. Let’s see if that happens. That’s certainly not the case for another project that’s happening in Toronto right now that we hear about with a lot of frustration.

There have been challenges. There are great people working at Metrolinx on the front lines; sometimes we’ll talk to them. I’ve dealt with Metrolinx many times over the years, in many different capacities. But we’ve had some serious issues there.

Let’s talk about a collapse of a garage. Thank God, no one died. There was literally an abutting multi-residential complex right beside Finch, where a garage collapsed, and we still don’t, in general, know answers as to what happened.

There was recently a daycare flooding that affected hundreds of children who have been displaced, and I know the phone calls we were getting at that time were about constant service and other disruptions.

Right now, I’m fighting the telecom companies. Of course, now, if you happen to get Rogers in my community and you call and there’s poor service, they blame the construction on Finch. It seems like everybody is blaming that for everything, and in part, can I blame them?

We talk about accessibility. There are places where they have to create new stops as a result of the construction, and it’s like you’re wading through pools of water, on a rainy day, to get to a stop; it’s like you’ve got to climb a barbed wire fence, sometimes, to get there and wait in traffic.

We’ve had accidents, injuries—not just vehicular, but pedestrian—along the line.

Sometimes you’ll get up and there will be one of those safety cones placed along Finch, blocking, yet again, traffic. Why? Because now I’m on the phone with Metrolinx—“What’s going on?” “I don’t know. In two months, there’s going to be some sort of disruption. They’ve had to call for some utility to be moved.” And then guess what? “There’s something happening. They don’t know when it’s coming—it’s in two weeks; it could be a month. Let’s just block the traffic indefinitely.”

People are frustrated. There have been business losses, accidents—you name it. So can we be frustrated about it? Of course. Are the people frustrated about it? Of course.

Today, we’re debating Bill 131—amazing title, as always—Transportation for the Future Act, and really, what it is? It’s two schedules. Schedule 1 makes me think of the lack of consultation that this government seems to do. Do they do no consultation? No, they do. It’s just a question of who they’re willing to talk to. They talk to people, it seems, I think they’re willing to get a yes from, or someone who is going to be friendly to them in terms of what they’re proposing.

Rest assured, you’re a majority government, you have a lot of power; it is not an equal conversation for you and municipalities and many people. And I can tell you, because I talk to, probably, some of the same stakeholders you do, not always what they say to you is what they’re saying to us. Many stakeholders are walking on eggshells; it’s like they’re walking on a thin layer of ice, because they know that the province is like their parents and that they always have to be very delicate in terms of when they deal with you.

With regard to schedule 1, there is a potential effect on collective agreements. So did this government reach out to our public workers in transit, in the TTC? I was told no.

Did you reach out to management? I’m not sure. I suspect you would have. And guess what? Management have a lot of answers, but a lot of times their information are data points on a map, on an Excel spreadsheet.

Do you know who the workers are? The people we were calling heroes throughout the pandemic; the ones who were getting us from point A to point B, when most people were indoors. They are literally out there driving the routes; they understand the situation, and they understand the issues of the fact that inter-regional transit between borders—like Steeles.

My community and the Premier’s community have Steeles as a border. So you’ll bet that there are members of our constituencies who are interested in fare integration, service integration, but they want it to be sensible and something that’s going to work for all regions. And there are potential impacts, because when the government introduces a bill and the opposition has all of one day to research what they have a ministry and an army behind—one of the things that was pointed out is that if this isn’t done right, some integration could result in lesser service. You might have a particular route, let’s say, TTC-operated, and if it’s not done right and perhaps another provider outside of Toronto is now, thanks to this government, picking up passengers—who knows—in Toronto, that might tell Toronto management, “We don’t have many riders on this particular line anymore. Let’s cut this service.” And that could have effects too. So you need to really do the math if you’re going to do this.

Schedule 2 is very aspirational, but it’s evidence, again, of downloading, because, ultimately, here’s a government that will do anything to save a developer a service charge or a development fee or any responsibility to a municipality when they’re building. And then, what they’re doing here is saying, “You know what? We’re going to download now the entire creation, potentially, of GO stops”—now they’re calling it a revenue tool—“to municipalities.” But is that going to happen? Are developers, who really don’t want to pay for these things, going to now fund entire GO stops? I don’t know. It seems very hopeful on their part. But I get it. People are demanding transit and you want to take action, so you put down a bill that’s got a fancy title. It’s going to pass. If you have a majority government and you all decide to vote on it, which is what I anticipate, we’ll see what happens.

And the last thing I do want to talk about are these delays. We have these major, major projects that are so frustrating for communities, and especially the delays that tend to happen. And you know what? On these projects, you’ve got project managers, and if they’re paid by the year and projects go on indefinitely and on and on and on—and we have major projects right now that are like huge money holes. And I’m not even talking about the hole that the former Premier, Mike Harris, filled in on Eglinton, where we had a subway that was being built at the time and they thought it would be smart to waste countless millions of dollars backfilling a project with concrete so that you can’t even do it for the future. God knows what probably had to have been spent to clean up the mess that was made decades ago to build that.

So, do the official opposition have hesitation when it comes to this government in particular when they’re talking about transit and infrastructure and whatnot? Of course. Because, look, many of the projects begun by the Liberal government before, certainly with their flaws, have just seen the flaws continue with this government. We’re hopeful, because your success is the success of the province of Ontario. But if you want to be successful, consult everyone. Reach out and let’s have conversations.

Thank you very much.

Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have for questions and answers.

Further debate?

Danforth.

My question for my colleague here: As you’re well aware, the province downloaded transit costs to the city of Toronto and other places in the 1990s. The TTC has never recovered from that downloading. It doesn’t have the funds necessary to operate the system properly. It doesn’t have the capital funds that it requires.

Will this bill, in fact, address those shortcomings and, given that I expect you will say no, do you think this bill will actually make transit better in Toronto and the GTA?

It’s time for questions and answers.

I recognize the member for Toronto-Davenport.

First of all, if I remember correctly, the member is a York University graduate, in my community. With the advent of the new subway through York University, the issue that you are raising is something that I well know. This is going to pass like everything else is going to pass, not necessarily because it’s good or bad legislation, but because it’s a majority government, okay? Ask majority governments that you may have opposed in the past or your members would have opposed in the past.

All I’m saying, and it’s very simple: If you talk to the management of the Toronto Transit Commission, talk to the workers, too. Talk to the leadership of the workers. You gain something when you talk to the management, and certainly they have ideas and understanding, as well. But talk to the front-line workers and get their perspectives. I think all governments benefit from doing that and I think this is something that this government and all governments should be doing. I think that the best way to create comprehensive policy is to listen to everyone.

That is certainly an issue. We mentioned the Conservative government of the late 1990s, as well, that another one of their great achievements was lots and lots of downloading. Certainly that was one of the issues, and we continue to hear about that. We continue to hear that from the TTC—their management, I’m sure, in those conversations and consultations you’ve had with them, have told you that they’ve been requiring, needing, consistent funding and not one-offs.

And so absolutely, from that perspective, if you really want to help transit in the city of Toronto, get back to the table and bring back funding to the Toronto Transit Commission, because it is something that people across Toronto desperately need.

There have been challenges along that line in particular, but that line, whatever challenges we’ve faced, pales in comparison to others in the city of Toronto, south of us along Eglinton, and in other parts of the province. That is something that’s of concern, and that’s something that we hope, as we move forward and build more transit projects, is resolved, because I think all communities where we build deserve not just the lines that are being built, but better during the process of construction itself.

And so, this is something that I really hope, as this government moves forward, is really taken very seriously: service levels that exist in and between different regions and municipalities. It’s good to build infrastructure. It’s good to build sensible infrastructure. But if we don’t have the service levels on existing lines, and if our transit providers are not operating with adequate funding, then we are really doing a disservice to the people, the millions that take transit in whatever form it is every single day.

Thank you to the member opposite for their comments on this bill. When we took a look at this bill and before we moved forward into bringing the legislation in the House, I know the minister had many consultations with our stakeholder partners and transit agencies. And this is a direct request from the city of Toronto and the Toronto Transit Commission. Exactly what they’re asking for is exactly what we’re delivering.

You keep mentioning why this bill is going to pass. The reason this bill is going to pass is because the people on this side of the House are getting it done for the people of Ontario to make sure they can easily move from point A to point B and get to their destination in a timely manner.

My question is, when we brought forward removing double fares and integrating our transit network, the members opposite voted no to that. So I want to know, will the members opposite finally support this and make sure that giving Ontarians a properly integrated transit network is a priority for the members opposite, as well?

The member and I share a boundary right at Keele, and not that long ago, I walked from Dufferin and Finch all the way to 31 division to be part of a community barbecue with the Toronto Police Service. When you walk from Keele going westbound, you see the infrastructure that’s going in, especially as you get to the Jane corridor. You see the infrastructure improvements, that we are building transit. You can see it for yourself, right on the street corner.

So I want to say to my friend across the way that it’s undeniable, the advancements that we’re making by building transit, and I want to ask him: Do you not see for yourself, when you walk the streets near Finch, how important it is to build transit? That’s why the bill is before the House today.

I’d like to thank the member from Humber River–Black Creek for his presentation today. Earlier, I discussed the cancellation—or the breaking of the promise that the Conservative government made, not delivering on the $160 million they promised to London to expand GO Transit.

But I wanted to share a quote with the member and gather their thoughts. This is from the Western University newspaper, the Gazette:

“As someone who has lived in the GTA my whole life and loved the GO train commute, I was disappointed when I recently took a trip from London to Toronto on their new route....

“The route has one direct trip from London to Toronto at the crack of dawn—5:14 a.m. to be exact—ending at 9:13 a.m., and one return trip leaving at 4:19 p.m. and reaching London at 8:19 p.m. These timings are not convenient for Western students—or really anyone....

“Limiting the train to weekday service means there are no trips on Saturday or Sunday when students travel most....

“Students want to know if they miss one train, they’re not stuck and that there’s going to be another trip in a couple of hours....”

My question to the member: Do you think this is an example of what should be a successful pilot program? And would you visit London, Ontario, if you knew it was going to be an eight-hour round trip?