Mr. Speaker, what I do know is that the money that was committed to the extension of a key subway line in the city of Toronto is not moving forward because of the ideology of the government. The Conservatives are insisting on mandatory public-private partnership reviews before they will spend this money to expand our transit system.
We have recently seen the incredible failure of a public-private partnership for upgrading large sections of the subway system in London, England. We saw over $4 billion Canadian in cost overruns with a private consortium. The people of Britain are on the hook for that cost overrun.
The argument is that somehow these public-private partnerships take away risk from the public. The reality is, they simply do not. They privatize public infrastructure, public services and then leave the taxpayer on the hook for any cost overruns.
There may be money committed, for example, to transit in Toronto, but the money that has been pledged is not being spent and it really is a very ideological way to spend money. The city of Toronto has the sixth largest government in our country and we ought to leave it up to it to decide how to provide transit in the way it knows how to do best.