The election issue will be the tariffs and the threats from Trump.
It won't be a carbon tax election.
It won't be a housing election
It won't be an affordability election
It won't be a Trudeau is bad election.
And it won't be a HxR election.
That's not how Canadian politics work. The libs getting a new leader isn't somehow a panacea that stops the discussion on your first 4 points. The CPC aren't going "Oh no, Trudeau is gone, now we can't complain about all of the ways the LPC have failed us for the past 10 years", like no, whoever replaces Trudeau will have to face the brunt of all of these criticisms and more.
As much as I dislike him, he has done some good on the transportation front. It is the other stuff that would make me worry about him asPM.
Before HFR was introduced to us, HSR had been discussed over the last decades. The Turbo, from the 1960/70 was an early attempt at it. It is pre Via. It was CN.
There is no political capital to be had on rail at the federal level. That is more with the political climate than much else. The Northlander has been shut down for almost 15 years. So, should we expect GO to not go back for 15 years? Or, can we see how just like at the federal level, there needs to be the political will to do something. Currently, provincially, there is no political will in ON.
Via has been cut back almost to the lowest it can be without shutting down. If we use that same thinking GO Can be severely cut back and still be relevant. For instance, the shorter lines of Richmond Hill and Milton lines could be shut down. Even Stouffville could and still GO transit could exist. The Northlander could be shut down even before it starts up. All of these could hemp ON out of a financial hole if they needed something to pivot on.
Can you come up with a something that resembles a coherent point? "The Northlander has been shut down for almost 15 years. So, should we expect GO to not go back for 15 years?" First, the Northlander has been gone 12 years, not 15. Second, who said anything about matching resurrection timelines? The Northlander is taking a while to come back for reasons completely unrelated to GO London being pulled back.
More importantly, exactly what argument are you trying to provide here? This discussion is about how competent the different levels of government at delivering things like rail projects, and your earlier post was about how allegedly "The province is no better at managing passenger rail", but now you're bringing up that Go would need to shutdown Richmond Hill and Milton to match how the feds have handled VIA. So is the province just as incompetent as VIA or not?
And no, Stouffville, Milton, and Richmond Hill lines aren't going to get shut down, and to imply such an idea is ludicrous. And don't even try to bring up London GO to counter this point, in the province's own words the extension to London was a simple pilot program that they admitted wasn't guaranteed to stick around. In general using its cancellation as some proof that the province sucks at passenger rail and can't maintain services is ridiculous.
When the money is pouring from the feds,it is senseless to not match it and get the most bang for buck. No different than if your work has a thing where you invest a dollar and they will match it, why would you not do it? If tomorrow they stopped, how many would also stop? This boom in transit construction since 2008 has been partly due to needing to create jobs during the Great Recession. With the risk of losing our biggest trading partner, and the biggest economic driver in the province, ON no longer has the funds to do anything with it.
This is some A tier historical revisionism. Neither the OLP nor the OPC were driven to do massive transit expansion because the Feds were pitching in buck for buck, in fact both governments massively invested in transit despite the fact that they had to deal with federal governments that were at worst apathetic, or at best, treated such investments opportunistically. Whilst the Trudeau government did eventually help pitch in to Ford's transit expansion plans, he didn't do so until 2021 where he saw it as an opportunity to get some quick electoral points before that year's election. Until that point, the Ford government was marching ahead with all of the transit expansion without any strong guarantees that the Feds would help them out. And even then, they certainly haven't contributed
dollar to dollar as you've claimed. Unless I missed something, to date the feds have only contributed 1.9B to GO Expansion which I shouldn't have to say is barely 10% of what the whole thing will cost, if even that. Like its certainly not a hostile arrangement, but its also absolutely not a case of the provinces chasing free money.
The VI train is canceled because the bridges are unsafe. Much the same reason Gaspe was canceled. Tomorrow if that line was fixed, Via would return, much like Gaspe.Problem is, Via does not own either line. ON does not own any tracks in Eastern ON or Quebec. Via does Via could use the ROW they own to build something.
VIA is absolutely in a position to coordinate with the freight railroads to get the proper track access, and/or to make the proper investments to improve passenger rail. They don't need to own the Kingston Sub in order to add tracks and get their own slots. They've done it before, they could keep doing it. The problem is VIA is chronically underfunded, and don't have the money to make those infra improvements.
Meanwhile, Metrolinx is actively working with the freight railways in order to either buy out corridors, buy track slots, or improve corridors in order to allow more trains to run. The fact that CN owns the Halton Sub between Halwest and Silver isn't a deterrent to building infrastructure to allow for 2WADGO to Kitchener, nor was them owning Bayview Junction a deterrent to build improvements to allow for 2WADGO to West Harbour and Confederation.
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