Transport committee  Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here today and an honour to appear before the committee. I have a short presentation that will take me about 10 minutes, and then I think there's an opportunity to engage in a bit of a discussion and to dialogue after that. In the

Transport committee  Thanks for the question. I think it's a really important point to look at the need for some national strategies for how we deal with our public transportation requirements in the nation. I would say that a principle-based approach for dealing with a national transit strategy is

Transport committee  That is an excellent question. At Metrolinx, we basically look at it in three ways in terms of how we make project selection decisions in the end. The first level is the plan stage, when we look at all the needs—the linkages and the land use—and try to identify what the overall

Transport committee  I have a couple of points I would suggest. One is that the Air Rail Link, we believe, is a very important project for the regional economy. It is part of the Big Move. When we look at cities around the world, especially global cities that have a financial services core, we see th

Transport committee  Thank you very much for the question. That's a really important question, because we take our accountability to the public and to the municipalities very seriously. Fundamentally, we can't deliver on our objectives as a corporation unless we have a strong partnership with our m

Transport committee  Those are very good points. First of all, all of our planning work is done in public, so the public has a complete opportunity to participate, provide their input, and raise any concerns through the process. Those processes are ultimately approved under various environmental legi

Transport committee  I would expect that Metrolinx would be a consulting partner with whoever is the proponent of a project like that. The nature of that project will span a huge geographic area and I would assume that some kind of special purpose agency would need to be responsible for the delivery

Transport committee  Thanks for the question. It's interesting. Large parts of the greater Toronto and Hamilton area actually are quite rural in nature. We have rural transportation issues that we need to deal with as well, so we can probably relate much more closely than you would expect. The spe

Transport committee  I could cite both a road-based and a transit-based example--

Transport committee  --so that you could get a sense of both. It happens on both sides of the equation. In the Toronto region, one of the main boundaries between the city of Toronto and York Region is Steeles Avenue, which is a major east-west corridor. Actually, one half of the street is a York Reg

Transport committee  The good news is that we have a long-term plan now, called the Big Move, and it was adopted by all of our board members, who at the time were municipal mayors and councillors. By and large, it has held over the past three or four years. There have been challenges about which proj

Transport committee  I would agree with everything you said, except for the last three words, “on its own”, because I think for us to build a bit of a success story in building infrastructure and getting support, we've had to have the partnership of all the municipalities, the road authorities, and t

Transport committee  That's a very good point. I would say we've been able to succeed to the extent possible through the support of the Province of Ontario, which provided $14 billion of investment towards the implementation of the first round of projects. What we see in our implementation path forwa

Transport committee  I would imagine that the federal government would want to make sure that there is a framework for those plans. As to whether the federal government wants to be involved in the development of the plans, I guess my comment would be that I would anticipate there wouldn't be a lot of

Transport committee  I would say that we do engage with the federal government on areas that they have a particular interest in. One example would be rail corridors and goods movement; that is a very important area for freight as well as passenger transportation. So there are elements, I would say, t