Toronto Mayor John Tory told Guelph’s business elite Thursday that turning to the private sector could be the key to bringing high speed rail to the region.
“I’m not afraid of that,” Tory told a gathering of roughly 150 people as the keynote speaker at the 2018 Regional Economic Summit at Linamar’s Hazenfratz Centre for Manufacturing Excellence on Woodlawn Road.
Business, city and higher education leaders from the city filled the room for the event, which was put on by the Guelph Chamber of Commerce
He said that government needs to take the “small risk” of looking to see what possibilities exist in the private sector for making high speed rail a reality and not a concept.
Money, as usual, is the key hurdle to getting a high speed rail line built that would have stops in Guelph, Kitchener and Waterloo, Tory said in an interview following his keynote speech.
“It usually is money,” he said, adding later that perhaps it’s also missing the willpower to get it done.
He said he is frustrated when he sees Canadian pension funds making huge investment in rail lines, buildings and airports outside the country.
“And yet we have a very pressing need right here in our own country to build a high speed rail line, at least this one in southern Ontario.
“I would be turning to those private sector people and the new infrastructure bank and other places, and say ‘I’m prepared to think outside the box in order to get this done and get this train running'."
Tory said public transportation is key to reducing the traffic congestion in the Greater Toronto Area, as it is in the municipalities themselves.
“I think we simply have to adopt the principal on a provincial and regional basis that we’ve adopted locally, which is that the single best way to address traffic is to get people out of their cars,” he said.
“The single best way – and the only way, frankly, to get people out of their cars ... – is to provide them with public transportation options that are going to get them from point A to point B.
“That is why the expanded GO Train service is needed, and it’s needed sooner than later, so that the faster we can implement that, the better. The faster we can get a high speed train on the tracks and running, the better. That will take people out of their cars, it will improve productivity and it will be good for the environment, plus many other reasons.
“I think there’s going to be a fairly collective agreement on that, but we just have to get on with actual doing it and paying for it.”
Tory told those gathered that it is up to the municipalities in the corridor to get out and sell themselves to the rest of the world.
“We cannot afford to live in our own world and not be out telling the world how great our corridor is,” Tory said, adding that the diversity, depth and quality of the talent pool of the corridor is “our greatest calling card.”
Thursday’s event included a ‘leaders panel’ discussion, featuring Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie, Conestoga College President John Tibbits, County of Wellington Warden Dennis Lever and University of Guelph vice-president Malcolm Campbell.
