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.