Toronto City Council has formally approved a deal that will see the province take ownership of key transit expansion plans for the city, including a desperately-needed relief line.
Council approved the deal by a vote of 22-3 Tuesday. The vote follows months of negotiations between city staff and provincial officials and authorizes city staff to enter into formal agreements and partnerships with the province in order to get the projects built.
“In the end this is going to be more transit built faster to more parts of the city and on a very favourable basis to the taxpayers of the City of Toronto,” Mayor John Tory told CP24 following the vote.
The deal will see the city retain ownership over the existing subway system. At the same time the province will take on responsibility for funding and building the three-stop Line 2 Scarborough subway extension and the Ontario Line – Premier Doug Ford’s revised version of the downtown relief line that would run from the Ontario Science Centre at Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue to Ontario Place by the waterfront. The city will also commit to working with the province on the Eglinton West LRT and the Yonge North Subway Extension into York Region.
The province will compensate the city for money already spent on years of planning and work for the projects.
Council’s nod to the deal ends a year of uncertainty over who would handle transit expansion in the city and what it would look like. Council’s previous transit plans were thrown into question after Premier Doug Ford last year said that the province would explore uploading the TTC’s subway network and look to take over planned subway expansion projects.
The surprise announcement touched off months of negotiations between provincial and city officials. Earlier this month the province announced that it would no longer seek to upload the subway system. At the same time the province announced that it would take ownership over the new subway projects.
Tory said the alignment of the Ontario Line means that the new subway will pass through Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park, two underserved areas of the city with large populations.
“Thorncliffe is the first point of destination for many people who come to Toronto from other countries, and they are not adequately served by transit,” Tory said. “This will put the so-called Ontario Line into service in those communities in the next few years, which would not have been the case if it wasn’t for this deal. “
Tory said the new route will also connect the Ontario Line to the Eglinton Crosstown, further relieving pressure from the Yonge Line. The previous design work for the relief line imagined a northern terminus around Pape Avenue and Bloor Street.
The deal lets the city off the hook for about $5 billion that it would have had to contribute to the relief line and the Scarborough subway extension. The city says that it will now be able to use that money instead for state-of-good-repair work on the existing transit system and for other priority projects, such as waterfront transit and the Eglinton East LRT.
Deal hammered out over 50 meetings
While some on council had criticized Tory for negotiating with the province in the face of a perceived attack on the city’s transit system, Tory said diplomacy has paid off.
Speaking on CP24 ahead of the vote Monday night, Tory said there is now the “chance of a lifetime” to have all three levels of government aligned on transit expansion in the city.
“I think what was key was that both myself and the council and premier Ford allowed professional public servants to go and sit at a table and they had 50 meetings where I think between the two sides they convinced each other of changes they had to make in their respective positions so that we could get a deal that we could proceed with together instead of fighting for years,” Tory said.
“I have no doubt that if we’d fought, it would have delayed transit for a further number of years because it would have just been fighting which I think would have driven you, that we all represent out there, crazy.
“I think once the two governments came together – Mr. Ford’s government and our government – it then caused the federal Liberals who got re-elected to say ‘we’ll sign on to that program as well’ and I think now this is the chance of a lifetime to have all three levels of government aligned to work together on specific transit projects and get on with them.”
Ford calls for further federal funding
Speaking with CP24 Tuesday afternoon, Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney said the council vote marks a “historic day.”
“I’d like to thank Mayor Tory for his leadership on this issue and for the all the councillors who supported it,” Mulroney said. “This is a landmark deal.”
While the province has assumed the city’s portion of costs for subway expansion, the projects still rest on billions of dollars of already-promised federal funding – up to $660 million for the Line 2 extension and $3.151 billion for the Ontario Line.
In a statement Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford thanked the city and Ottawa for their contributions, but called on the federal government to boost its funding for subway construction.
"We look forward to further conversations with the City on how best we work together to accelerate project construction to see these priority projects built quickly and on schedule,” Ford said in the statement.
“But to genuinely embrace this historic opportunity to take a massive leap forward in delivering transit for the region we need Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government to commit to increasing their contribution and funding their fair share of the entirety of our subways program."
The province has set a completion target of 2027 for the Ontario Line, though critics have questioned whether that target is realistic.
