For the first time since this provincial election began, Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak was clear about whether a PC government would fund the second phase of light rail in Ottawa — and the answer was a resounding “No.”
“No, we can’t afford it,” Hudak said simply when asked about the project at a campaign stop in Ottawa South on Thursday morning.
While Hudak has said that he wouldn’t yank back the $600 million already approved for the 12.5-kilometre section of LRT currently under construction — it will run from Tunney’s Pasture to Blair Station —
the PC leader said he won’t support the $1 billion of funding needed from the province to extend rail to Orléans in the east, Bayshore in the west, and Riverside South (with a possible airport link).
It will be interesting to see how Hudak’s bold statement will play out politically for local PC candidates. The ridings of Ottawa-Orleans, Ottawa West-Nepean and Ottawa South would see rail extended into their ridings if Phase 2 of the LRT plan goes ahead. The PC candidates in all three ridings are in tight races with their Liberal counterparts. At an east-end Ottawa rally on Wednesday, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne went to great pains to emphasize how her party was the only one that would support extending LRT in Ottawa (a point she also made during Tuesday night’s debate).
Mayor Jim Watson expressed his disappointment over Hudak’s announcement, arguing that the PC leader has been quick to support Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s “subways-subways-subways pledge,” while including nothing in Tory platform for transit expansion in Ottawa.
“There’s $2 billion in the platform of the PC party for Greater Toronto Area transit issues, and zero dollars for Ottawa,” Watson told reporters. “I think any reasonable person would say that is just not fair for the people of Ottawa.”
The LRT extension is planned for 2018 to 2023 and construction would ideally begin as soon as the first phase is completed in 2018. The city’s $3-billion plan calls for the cost to be split equally between the municipal, provincial and federal governments. Watson said that “the city has allocated its dollars” and is planning to submit funding requests in either late 2015 or early 2016.
Watson said that he would, of course, work with whomever’s elected.
“We know that the province has billions of dollars they spend on infrastructure and I find it very difficult to believe that local MPPs would not go and fight for our fair share for funding to get the system to go farther east, farther west and down south,” said Watson. “It just doesn’t make any sense that we would get no money.”
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