Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being with us today.
An important part of your mandate is the funding of public transit projects. As we all know, there are important transit priorities in communities across the country, things such as the LRT in Hamilton, Vancouver's Broadway and Langley SkyTrain expansions, and extensions to the blue and orange lines in Montreal. It's really positive to see that your government has committed funding to some of these projects. We're hopeful that more funding will be available for Hamilton and for the second stage of Vancouver's Broadway extension to UBC.
However, we've also heard concern about how federal funding is getting spent. With regard to the LRT here in Ottawa, the federal government has provided $762 million toward stage 1 and over $1 billion toward stage 2. We saw multiple delays during construction, and since it has opened, users have suffered constant delays, missing trains, and replacement buses. There are real concerns about how public-private partnerships are being used to build and manage transit systems such as Ottawa's LRT.
Are you concerned that handing over control to private corporations denies the accountability for service that transit users here in Ottawa deserve and expect?