Earlier this month Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees rose in the house to allege that the government was paying Bombardier penalties of $70 million or more due to the changes in Toronto's transit plans.

"The first delivery date has come and gone, and the reason that the government was not able to take delivery is that it has nowhere to put them," Klees said in question period on Oct. 21. "The fact of the matter is that we have it on good authority that the penalties on that single contract to date are more than $70 million and growing by the day."

Sources at Metrolinx confirm that the government has had to pay $3 million to Bombardier because of shifting timetables for completion of Toronto's light-rail projects. However, the shifting timetables in question are not because of the Liberal conversion to the gospel of subways earlier this summer, but rather due to the back-and-forth earlier in Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's tenure, when the plans of his predecessor, David Miller, were abandoned in favour of an all-underground Eglinton Crosstown line. That plan, in turn, was abandoned in February 2012 when Toronto City Council voted to affirm its support for the LRT plan, causing Metrolinx to rearrange the delivery schedule of light-rail vehicles later that summer.

(That summer, then-transportation minister Bob Chiarelli said that the debate on Toronto's transit plan was closed, shooting down early efforts by TTC Chair Karen Stintz to commit the province and city to funding a Scarborough subway line. Things change.)

So where's the other $67 million? It's actually $65 million, and Bombardier says that it's all part of the regular contract ─ and no new money is being spent by the province.

"First of all, we're not talking about penalties," says Bombardier spokesperson Marc Laforge. "What we're talking about ─ $65 million ─ is a progress payment on work that has been done." Laforge is adamant that it's not correct to add the $3 million and the $65 million to round up to $70 million. "One is extra costs, one is for work that has been done on the contract."

"(The $65 million) has nothing to do with the reordered schedule," he adds. "It has to do with the fact that work has been done in this 182-car contract, and that we have been paid accordingly. That's what it means."

Laforge says that there's been no change in the number of trains being ordered as part of the contract at this time. (Metrolinx and Bombardier are, however, renegotiating the contract to reflect the different scope of the Scarborough subway project.) If Metrolinx wanted to accelerate the delivery of the light-rail trains now that the province is moving ahead with a subway extension in Scarborough, Larforge says that's "absolutely" possible.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne-Marie Aitkins says that the regional transit planner is still interested in moving some of the LRT orders up but can't say more as renegotiations are ongoing.

Government paying $68 million to Bombardier, but only $3 million is for changes in Metrolinx schedule

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