I think I understand my friend’s objection to my remarks as not having a link to the government’s budget bill. What I’m attempting to establish, over the next 16 minutes, is that we as a Legislature—not just this government—have a responsibility to ensure adequate funding is put into our transit system to ensure people’s safety. I think it’s important that we’re all aware of the gravity of the matter. I apologize to the member if some of the issues that I’m talking about here, in all honesty, are hard to hear, but they are happening on our transit system, and I will endeavour over the next 15 minutes to make the link to the investments this place needs to make in our transit system to ensure people’s safety.

Speaker, I’ll continue.

On January 21, 2023, a 24-year-old TTC operator was shot with a BB gun while waiting for her shift to begin in Scarborough.

The next day, four teenagers were charged with swarming and violently beating two other TTC operators.

On March 4, 2023, Waterloo Regional Police Service was notified of a man following a woman off a public transit bus with the intent of sexual assault. Three similar incidents happened the following week.

On March 24, 2023, a 19-year-old in Barrie with no fixed address assaulted a bus operator. The operator, to this day, remains on disability leave. The assailant was released to the community without any supports.

On March 25, 2023—an incident many people in this House will know well—Gabriel Magalhaes, 16 years old, died in hospital after being stabbed by someone as he sat on a bench at the TTC’s Keele subway station.

On March 27, 2023—the incident I recounted, in our city of Ottawa, at the Rideau LRT station.

Then, most recently, on March 31, 2023, a man was robbed at knifepoint by two suspects at the TTC’s Coxwell station. He was not injured.

It bears repeating that hundred of thousands, millions of people—if you think about how many people used public transit in the province of Ontario over the last few months—have used public transit without experiencing violent, graphic incidents like these, have worked in the system, but I want to believe that our goal in our public transit system is zero injuries, zero accidents, zero assaults. That’s our goal. It’s the TTC’s stated goal. It’s OC Transpo’s stated goal. Most municipal transit authorities say the same thing.

People are alarmed, moms and dads are alarmed, neighbours are alarmed at what is happening in the transit safety system. Unfortunately, too often, people think that the answer to dealing with violence in our transit system is simply a criminal justice response; that this is matter of very violent people who need to be locked up and kept away from the public, and that will resolve our problems in public transit. Experts I’ve had occasion to speak to recently dispute that case.

It’s also not accurate to attribute all of the transit violence I named—and I did not name a complete list—to simply folks struggling with unmet mental health needs or folks who are homeless. Many of the incidents of violence in our public transit systems have happened with people who, for one reason or another, see transit riders and transit operators as easy targets of violence.

So what can we do? I want to make the case in the time I have this morning that what we absolutely must do is put money into the operational budgets of transit systems. Let me give you a very concrete example that comes to me by way of the great people who operate the TTC systems, who are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113.

Subway cars operating in the city of Toronto historically had two major positions per car. There was a driver, and then there was another position known as the guard. The guard would be that person—if you’re on the subway platform—who’s looking out the window, ensuring that the doors are safely closed, that there’s nothing wrong happening on the platform, but, also, the guard’s job is to monitor general well-being of the platform itself. If they see a problem, they have the capacity inside the subway car to immediately notify the TTC constables, who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the two units work very well together. Unfortunately, given the fact that operational funding has dramatically reduced in the TTC system, that guard position has been cut by the Toronto Transit Commission. So transit operators, in some cases, are—the only source of support in a critical incident could be that one person who is operating that subway; the window opens temporarily. Yes, there are emergency buttons you can push, but the operators of the system tell me it’s not sufficient, and I trust them.

I also know that budget 2023 that the government just introduced allocated only $80 million—on a provincial budget offering of over $200 billion—for operational funding for our public transit systems. There is a link between that underinvestment and the inadequacy of funds available for the guard position on subway cars or other crisis response people who could be made available to help neighbours in crisis.

What could we do? There’s a lot we could do. The first thing we can do, as I’ve tried to do in recent weeks and months in my capacity of transit critic, is talk to the folks who know what’s going on. Foremost for me are the workers who fix, operate and maintain all of our transit infrastructure. They have been telling me since the fall of last year that we are at risk of multiple critical incidents in public transit in Ontario. Sadly, incident after incident has taken place, and we have not been able, yet, at least, to convince the government to prioritize money into operational funding for public transit—but money, also, that would not just be for reinstating positions like the guard position that I was talking about; money that would work hand in hand in a city like Toronto with crisis response that is appropriate to the situation.

Let’s talk about what happened to Gabriel Magalhaes, the 16-year-old who lost his life after being stabbed at Keele station. Gabriel’s mom, who I’m sure many of you have seen, has had the bravery to speak publicly about her grief and about what should be done. I want to read into the record words that she expressed to the CBC’s Adrienne Arsenault in a poignant, candid interview. Andrea is a nurse, and this is what she said:

“We need to start talking about violence, the root causes of violence. I know it comes down to the social determinants of health. It’s not an easy solution. We’re not talking about adding more police force” or “locking people up.” We need to ask the question, “What are the root causes? Why is this happening? Why is a person homeless? Why is a person not able to access care, access supports? ...

“I came from ... a very violent country, Brazil. Why did I move away? I wanted a better life. I see the violence escalating. I read about horrible things ... on the TTC. I feel deeply when I hear those things, but you never think it’s going to happen to you.... I would like people to try to put themselves in my shoes, in my husband’s shoes ... a beautiful ... shy boy, but he had dreams. He had goals....

“I’m a nurse. I had a clinical placement in mental health hospitals. As a society ... we love to blame one person ... ‘You picked up the knife.’ But could this have been prevented ... from the beginning?”

Then, she went on in responding to a question from Adrienne Arsenault about folks in our profession, Speaker, who are elected officials offering our thoughts and prayers. To that, she said:

“I’m going through” stages of grief, “but that makes me angry—so angry. Because when they want votes, they promise everything, but how about action? How about what really needs to be done? Empty words make me mad....

“Don’t live with fear.” We need to use public transit. “But can’t we please ... make effective change, so we can all be able to go outside and be able to breathe and feel safe? I feel like this is still an amazing city; we can do better.”

I agree, wholeheartedly, with every single word.

I think that’s why the Premier, as I understand it, called Andrea personally.

But as she implores us to realize that we have to go beyond empathy—although empathy is the important first step. If we’re hearing from transit authorities, workers, riders, administrators who run the system that we urgently need more operational funding, right now, to deal with this situation in a multi-faceted way, we have to revise what we propose in budget 2023 and unleash a lot more revenue.

I know the government has an unallocated contingency fund of $4 billion. I hope I persuasively made the case this morning that some of that money needs to go, right now, into our operational funding for public transit, so nobody’s loved one faces the kinds of consequences I talked about in the speech I made this morning.

I had occasion at committee to see the Minister of Infrastructure present on Bill 69—and I think this is a related point. The minister made the point in her presentation of saying it’s a priority of the government to utilize surplus government-owned buildings in the province of Ontario, and that that was one of the motivations for Bill 69. I was shocked to learn, as I prepared for that committee, that the Auditor General put out a report in 2017 noting, believe it or not, that there were at that point 812 unused, vacant government of Ontario buildings that we heat, that we electrify. The minister named that as a major problem the government wants to address.

I want to submit, for the purpose of the budget bill, that were the government to say today, after hearing what I had to say and listening to experts in the transit sector, “All right, we’ve missed something; we do need to allocated money into operational funding for transit,” I guarantee you the first thing that crisis workers will say—the great Streets to Homes program the city of Toronto has, that was often the first group of folks who will show up to help TTC constables, to help TTC staff. If someone in a mental health crisis is in a subway station, or on a bus, streetcar or train, the Streets to Homes program will greet that person in crisis, sit them down, put their arm on their shoulder and say, “Are you having a tough time? How’s it going?” They’ll talk it over with coffee. They are skilled de-escalators. But do you know what those crisis response workers don’t have? They don’t have access to shelter space or transitional housing to refer people to. So guess what happens? You de-escalate somebody in one moment, but then an incident goes on to happen later.

We’re in a province where, as of five years ago, there are 812 vacant public buildings that, I want to believe, experts in crisis response and transitional housing—because I’m going to guess a lot of those buildings are in this city. We can repurpose and reutilize those spaces so you can find some temporary homes for people, wrap some supports around it, with their consent, and get them started on making a better life.

One of my gateways into politics, when I was a graduate student in this city in the 1990s, was helping the great Jack Layton when he was a city councillor fight for programs just like this. What motivated Jack to act was the gaudy spectacle of homeless folks freezing to death near his home. He felt compelled to act, as a city councillor, and he knew there was money in the country, in the city and in the province to address it. To his credit, the then mayor, Mel Lastman, initiated a program that, as I understand it, eventually grew into the Streets to Homes outreach program that the city has.

But now everything old is new again. Now we’re in a situation where, yes, the city of Toronto and other cities can demand that homeless encampments be taken down. But people don’t disappear. The housing and homelessness crisis that we have in this city doesn’t go away.

If, in polar climates, which our country has—January and February; we’re both from Ottawa, Speaker—you push people out of an encampment, where are they going to go in a large city like Toronto or Ottawa or London or Windsor? They might go on a bus. They might go in a subway station. They might be living with unmet needs. And that’s when accidents happen.

I want to believe, as I believed then, that an ounce of prevention is better than whatever one would think a pound of cure is. Locking people up and having a very harsh criminal justice response to situations like the ones I’ve talked about this morning is not going to get the outcomes we need.

Speaker, I just want to be clear: I am not saying that people shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions—absolutely not. There is no justifiable case for violence. But as Andrea Magalhaes said in honour of her son, if our goal is actual community safety, then we can achieve community safety. But it requires the right smart investments. It requires an awareness, as she said, as a nurse, of the social determinants of health—and it requires us prudently using the money given to this place.

The government has proposed a budget of over $200 billion, $80 million of which was allocate to transit authorities for operational funding. If we can get to what advocates told me they needed for this upcoming year, $500 million—and I know the government was made aware of this; I know the finance minister was made aware of this; I know the Minister of Transportation was made aware of this. If those investments could go directly into partnerships with community agencies who work directly with folks at risk, either at risk of reoffending—they’ve offended before, or if there is a recidivistic risk, or if there is a behavioural risk due to traumas that person grew up with—that is money well spent. That is us, as Andrea said in her comments, moving beyond thoughts and prayers.

I don’t think any of the families of folks who suffer violence that I’ve named in my speech this morning want to hear thoughts and prayers anymore, as important as that empathy is. They want this place to act.

The good news is, we have the resources to act, we have the expertise to act, and we can act, but we have to do it.

That’s how budget 2023 can be improved.