How Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals secretly helped kill the Scarborough LRT

As a debate at city hall raged in the summer of 2013 about whether to build a subway or a light-rail line in Scarborough, in front of TV cameras Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government appeared to stay the course.

“We’re on track to do LRT,” then-transportation minister Glen Murray told reporters ahead of a crucial council decision that July. Less than a year earlier, the province had signed an agreement with the city to build and fund an LRT.

“If you’re asking am I ready to drop everything and say, ‘OK, yeah, we’re just going to do a subway?’” Murray continued.

But behind-the-scenes, Murray was already backing a subway and the Liberals were influencing a council process that would undo the LRT they had agreed to build, according to internal emails newly-obtained through a freedom of information request. In doing so, the province ignored expert advice that a subway was not justified and pressured what is meant to be the arms-length transit agency to endorse a subway in spite of the agency’s backing of an LRT.

The emails from the premier’s office, taken together with emails earlier obtained by the Star from the provincial transit agency Metrolinx, as well as records released to and detailed by journalist John Lorinc in a five-part Spacing investigation and recent interviews, offer a clear picture of how a more than billion-dollar transit project nearing construction was cancelled.