It’s my pleasure to rise in the House today to say that our government is delivering on its promise to expand services along the Kitchener GO rail line.

There aren’t always big announcements or ribbon cuttings for this type of work. These are the sorts of projects that you have to be a bit of a transit nerd to really appreciate. So I won’t go over the whole history, like when the NDP scrapped the GO train from Guelph in 1993, but let’s take a little bit of a look back.

Under the previous Liberal government, the Kitchener line schedule from 2017 listed train trips at eight trips per day. And I am proud to say, since we took office, we have doubled those trips along the Kitchener line. Since 2018, Metrolinx has completed track upgrades on the Kitchener line, so people can get to where they need to go 15 minutes faster. In 2021, engineering crews worked on tracks through the city of Guelph. Poor track conditions and multiple crossings had reduced train speeds there to just—get this, colleagues—16 kilometres per hour. Now, trains travel the same stretch at over 40 kilometres per hour.

The total travel time between Kitchener and Toronto, thanks to these types of improvements, will soon reach just 90 minutes. This would make the line even more of an attractive option instead of taking the 401. This work is critical to getting trains going faster and to getting more trains on the track. We have gotten a lot of work done, but we will not stop there. We will keep going.