Mr. Speaker, one would think communities living near the building of a major transportation infrastructure should be able to participate in some of the gain instead of all of the pain.
In the case of the air-rail link being built from Pearson airport to Union Station, the very folks who through their taxes are helping to pay for this service have to live through the disruptions of it being built, and have to live with the health consequences of the decisions of the Ontario Liberal government, with money from the federal Conservative government, to use diesel trains instead of electric trains.
Toronto will be the only major city in the world to be running an air-rail link using diesel. Diesel exhaust is a known carcinogen that is particularly dangerous to children and the elderly.
Hundreds of thousands of people live within a kilometre of this line in Toronto, including many in my riding of Davenport. The people in my riding are hard-working, progressive and honest folks. They know we need better and more mass public transit, but they want it built right the first time and they want it accessible to their community. And when they get on one of these trains, they want that train to be an electric train.