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—

Thank you to the member opposite for your speech today. My question to you, the member from Parkdale–High Park, would be—really, I’m quoting the regional chair of Durham, John Henry, who was quoted as saying, “This legislation brings Durham region one step closer to its vision of vibrant, livable and sustainable communities near new rapid transit stations. We applaud the province’s innovative approach to economic development, enabling new legislation to help make the four new stations along the GO Lakeshore East extension into Bowmanville a reality.”

So we’ve got broad support by residents, by different levels of government, and yet it seems—I understand the official opposition certainly has a job to oppose and be an opposition, but when you see good legislation, why aren’t you supporting it?

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?

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”?

Thank you for your presentation. It’s always a pleasure to chat with the member when I see him here at Queen’s Park. I know he works hard.

This is a government that is unashamed about their work in reducing developer responsibilities and developer charges when they do construct and build. Now, we see in schedule 2, in essence, a form of developer charge. How do you balance the decision-making around this bill in light of so much of your efforts and work to do the opposite of what schedule 2 seems to be suggesting?

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.