Canada is one of the only G7 countries without a national transit strategy.
That failure has consequences. Cities are forced to fund transit through property taxes. Systems fall into permanent deficits. Service gets cut. Fares go up. Workers are stretched thin, facing burnout and rising violence on the job. Riders lose reliable service. Communities are left unable to plan for the future.
It shouldn’t be this way. Ottawa keeps treating transit like an afterthought.
As leader of the NDP, I would implement a national transit strategy that finally gets this right: one built for and by working people, transit workers, and the communities that depend on them.
For me, transit is an essential public service, not a luxury.
Right now, the federal government mostly funds capital projects — shiny new infrastructure — but leaves cities on their own to cover the cost of actually running transit. That’s backwards. You can’t meet climate targets, keep fares affordable, or run safe systems if there’s no stable funding to operate what’s already been built.
A national transit strategy must include permanent, predictable federal operating funding. That’s how you stabilize service, improve frequency, hire and retain workers, and keep fares from climbing. To achieve this goal, I would immediately reverse Carney’s $5 billion cuts to public transit funding and expand federal transit investments to include a permanent dedicated operating stream of $2 billion a year to keep fare low and buses and trains running in communities across the country.
Worker safety has to be front and centre. Transit workers are dealing with rising violence and unsafe conditions every day. That’s unacceptable. Federal transit funding should come with strong national standards for safety, clear reporting systems, and real employer obligations to protect front-line workers.
This is also about climate. Canada will not meet its climate commitments without a serious shift away from private vehicles and toward frequent, reliable public transit. Electrification alone won’t cut it if service keeps getting worse. Expanding service and operating hours is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to reduce emissions, and there is no doubt this requires federal leadership. That’s why I will also double federal funding to $4.4 billion for fleet electrification by 2030.
Equity matters too. Too many people live in transit deserts — in suburban, rural, northern, and Indigenous communities — where mobility depends on whether you can afford a car. That fuels isolation, deepens inequality, and makes communities less safe. A national transit strategy must guarantee a publicly owned intercity bus and rail network that reconnects communities coast to coast to coast. No one should be left behind because a corporation decided they weren’t worth serving.
And when we invest public money, it needs to create good Canadian jobs. We should be building transit vehicles here, using Canadian steel, with union labour, not shipping taxpayer dollars overseas while our own workers are laid off.
This strategy is about affordability. It’s about safety. It’s about climate action. And it’s about respect for the workers who keep our communities moving.
We don’t need any more photo ops. We need a plan that actually works and the political will to deliver it.
That’s the national transit strategy I’m fighting for.