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Two of Ontario’s main party leaders focused their attention south of the border Friday with American tariffs possibly hours away, while a third set her sights on shoring up local votes with transit pledges.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie pledged to install platform barriers at all Toronto subway stations, increase crisis intervention teams and hire more constables for transit services across the province.
Meanwhile, Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford said if re-elected, he will spend $22 billion to build infrastructure as part of a stimulus package in the face of a possible trade war with the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he will impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods on Saturday. His ongoing threats have had NDP Leader Marit Stiles positioning herself as the person who will protect Ontario workers, particularly those in the auto sector.
Outside a busy subway station in Toronto’s east end on Friday, Crombie detailed part of her plan to get more people on transit with the confidence they’ll be safe.
“We want people to ride public transit and I want to make it as accessible and safe as possible,” Crombie said.
If her party wins the snap election Ford called earlier this week, Crombie said she will hire 300 special constables for transit operations in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area. A Crombie government would also invest in more security cameras and safety equipment.
Crombie did not release the cost of the proposed plan she would enact should she become premier, but said it will come during the campaign.
It will not be cheap. Subway platform barriers at all stations in Toronto would cost $4.1 billion, the Toronto Transit Commission’s latest capital budget plan said.
Experts say platform barriers in cities around the world have reduced the vast majority of injuries and death on the tracks. They are particularly helpful for reducing suicides.
There have been 816 suicides on Toronto’s subway system since 1954, the TTC said, and another 915 people have attempted suicide over that time. In 2023, the last full year of data available, 11 people died by suicide and another 33 people attempted suicide, the TTC said.
Toronto Public Health recommended the platform barrier system in 2014 in a larger report on suicide prevention. The TTC has also said it would save lives.
The issue became prominent in 2018 after a 56-year-old man pushed a 73-year-old man onto the tracks in front of a moving train at Toronto’s busy Bloor-Yonge Station. The man pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Then-mayor John Tory agreed that barriers would save lives, but did not know where the money would come from to install them. At the time, the TTC estimated it would cost over $1 billion to install barriers on every platform.
When asked by a reporter Friday about the billions that system would now cost, Crombie seemed surprised.
“If that is the cost of safety, then so be it,” she said.
Ford did not commit to building platform barriers, but defended his government’s transit investments over his past two terms.
“We’re going to continue spending money on building transit, getting people out of the cars, getting them into transit,” Ford said at a campaign stop in Niagara Falls, Ont.
“We’re spending over $70 billion on expanding transit around our province.”
On a possible trade war with the U.S. that could hit full force Saturday, Ford outlined part of his “economic action plan.”
The package contains $15 billion for capital projects, including a widening of the Queen Elizabeth Way in southwestern Ontario, and $5 billion for the province’s infrastructure bank to invest in housing and other projects.
The package would go forward regardless of Trump’s actions and will prioritize “shovel-ready” projects.
“These are important investments in infrastructure,” Ford said. “Just as important, they’re important investments in jobs, their paycheques, their confidence, and their peace of mind for tens of thousands of families.”
In Windsor, Ont., Stiles stopped at a union shop to show support to autoworkers.
“The NDP will protect workers from these painful tariffs, and we will fight back against Trump’s threats,” she said.
“We’re going to defend the auto sector and we’re going to defend the progress that you all made on electric vehicles every second of every day.”
On Thursday, Stiles was less definitive in her support of two large EV battery production deals signed by the provincial and federal governments. Stellantis and Volkswagen signed incentive-laden deals to set up shop in Windsor and St. Thomas, Ont., respectively.
She had said she would be “looking very carefully at the details” of those deals.
“We’re going to take care of people through actions that are going to secure you and your family, like income protection,” Stiles said.
Stiles provided few other details of that plan or how much it would cost taxpayers.
The budget for the Feb. 27 snap election is $189 million. The opposition has said that Ford called the early vote due to good polling numbers, getting ahead of a federal election and using Trump’s tariff threats as an excuse for personal gain.
— With files from Sharif Hassan in Niagara Falls, Ont.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 31, 2025.
Liam Casey and Allison Jones, The Canadian Press