Once again, Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has never met a fact he cannot mangle. There was a contested nomination and I defeated someone in that nomination race, but he should not allow the facts to get in the way of a good argument.
The transit funding that he speaks of is so profoundly insufficient that it boggles the mind. We have yet to get a 30-year commitment on transit. The reality is that the transit funding that was secured came after the fact. The provincial Liberal government at Queen's Park is the government that actually drove this agenda. If it had not had the ability, together with the City of Toronto, to force Ottawa into this conversation, it would have gotten nothing, just as when the stimulus package was unveiled. We had asked for money to expand our streetcar and light rapid transit lines and were turned down by the government. Instead, we had to build tiny parks everywhere in the city, in particular in the ridings held by Conservatives.
I will take no lectures from a government that has no national transit policy, which sporadically invests in transit, has never provided an operating subsidy, and only funds projects when Rob Ford asks.