Transit makes its way to Mississauga

It was another stop on the transit announcement express.

Premier Doug Ford took to Mississauga to tout the Eglinton West extension to Pearson Airport, which will go out for a request for proposals for tunnelling work tomorrow. Three bidders, both Canadian and international, have been shortlisted for the project.

The 9.2-kilometre light rail extension to the Eglinton Crosstown was first announced in early 2019 along with the government's $28.5 billion GTA transit plan and would go from Mt. Dennis to Renforth Dr. for seven stops. Eventually, that would allow for a connection north to Pearson Airport. The project will cost $4.9 billion, with the steep price coming in large part due to six kilometres of tunnelling under parts of Etobicoke and Mississauga. An earlier analysis by Metrolinx found that the project would only deliver $1.7 billion in benefits despite its $4.9 billion price tag, a cost-benefit ratio of 0.34. Toronto City Council also voted for an at-grade plan as recently as 2019, reasoning that it's more cost-effective.

In announcing that the project will seek bids for tunnelling the premier used rationales that he relied on when he was a councillor at Toronto city hall. "We aren't going to close down Eglinton Ave.," he said, referring to the controversy of tunnelling along the arterial corridor, and positioning the option of digging underground as one that would serve cars well. "We're going to put that line underground where it belongs."

"The people out there, they want subways, and they won't settle for anything else," he said, although the technology used will be light rail in an underground format. By contrast, the government is choosing to run the higher density Ontario Line above ground in large portions of its route on the rationale that it will save money and speed the process along.

The premier also called on the federal government to step up with its funding commitment for the Eglinton West LRT extension, while expressing "100 per cent confidence" that they would pull through.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner took aim at the government's plan to hand out a contract for tunnelling before other components of the plan have come through. "We all want good public transit. But tunnelling for subways with stripped-down environmental assessments is wrongheaded. We must build more public transit, but eliminating crucial safeguards sets a terrible precedent."

School skepticism

The premier once again faced skeptical questions over the government's school reopening plan, while he defended it as the best in the country.

"We have the safest plan in the entire country and we're pulling out all stops, I won't spare a penny," he said, although school boards have asked for additional funding rather than drawing on their own reserves, which are used to fund liabilities like long-term disability. "We're listening, we're listening to the health experts and we have some great health advice, and we're listening to everyone," he added, citing experts like top medical officials at Public Health Ontario.

Asked about the move by the Toronto District School Board to make masks mandatory for all students starting with kindergarten, the premier expressed his own skepticism. "Well I go with the experts at SickKids, they're the ones who didn't recommend masks. They said they'd be fiddling around with the masks and, you know, I had four girls I know when they were little. You know, when they’re four years old, five years old, it's hard to keep the mask on them." For more on the premier's comments and the latest back-to-school developments, read this story.

The scheduled start of the school year is just 20 days away, although the government has now allowed there to be a staggered start of up to two weeks in order to ease in classes.

But the lack of additional funding to lower class sizes, among other issues, continued to rankle the opposition. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath referred to the plan as a "bargain basement scheme that pinches pennies on the backs of our students."

The NDP held a morning press conference in Scarborough that included some concerned parents, including Jennifer Sheridan. She said that she plans to withdraw her five-year-old daughter with autism from school this fall, as she doesn't believe the plan is adequate and that she is "deeply concerned and scared." Sheridan said this will mean some loss of her daughter's hard-won social skills, but that is the choice they had to make. "I do know that the plan is not safe for her," she said, adding that there needs to be a better plan.

Green thumbs down

The Greenbelt Council, an expert government panel chaired by former Toronto Mayor and PC MP David Crombie, continued to give a green thumb down to government policies in its latest report.

"Consistent with its past letters of advice the Greenbelt Council continues to have strong reservations about new transportation corridors in the Greater Golden Horseshoe in terms of both lack of need and the fact that such large-scale infrastructure compromises the protection of prime agricultural lands and the long Greenbelt," the letter stated.

The subject of this missive was the decision to shorten or alter the GTA West Corridor environmental assessment process. The panel noted a 2017 report that found the project failed several rubrics, including that it was "not the best way to address changing transportation needs" and did not provide "reasonable alternatives" to taking away prime agricultural land and hydrological features. The report also noted that the project would save about one minute per vehicle trip across the GGH.

The Greenbelt Council is now alarmed by the government's new process of completing "early works" before the EA process is complete, saying that the process should be "neither shortened nor altered."

In Brief: Government makes Eglinton West LRT RFP announcement

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