This is a bill that is relevant to southern Ontario, but doesn’t have anything to say about transit in northern Ontario. That’s the part of the province you see when you flip the map over.

Years ago, the Mulroney Conservative government killed passenger train transit to Thunder Bay. During the last few years, we lost—well, all communities lost—access to Greyhound bus transit. We went for months with no intercity transit at all, and now we have a patchwork of expensive bus services. Right now, it costs $350 to get from Geraldton to Thunder Bay—that’s about a three-hour drive—for a medical appointment, but the Northern Health Travel Grant only covers about half of that cost.

There are two parts to my question: (1) Will the government take the transportation needs of northerners seriously and reduce the costs of transit in northwestern Ontario? (2) Will the government increase the Northern Health Travel Grant so that northerners can afford to access health care when and where they need it?

Thank you very much for talking to us, really, about the situation for people with disabilities on public transit. I was recently at Yonge and Bloor. I finally discovered the accessible entrance and the elevator. I stood there for 10 minutes and the elevator didn’t come. I saw somebody who really, really needed that elevator, and he’d been standing there for 10 minutes too. There was no signage at all saying it was out of service, and there were no directions as to where to go if the elevator wasn’t working.

I’m wondering if you could just talk a bit about how frequently that kind of situation comes up.

There are provisions in the bill that suggest that the province is not planning on funding the building of all GO stations. Rather, they’re looking for already-strapped municipalities to come up with the money.

My question is, would there not be more than enough provincial dollars available to build GO stations without pressuring municipalities if the government reined in the gravy train currently being ridden by the 59 VPs of Metrolinx?