Ford's TTC Takeover (Bill 98)

For over a century, Toronto set its own transit fares — a matter of local democratic accountability that allowed the TTC Board, elected councillors, and by extension Toronto voters to determine what it costs to get around the city. Bill 98 ends that. Schedule 4 of the bill, the Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act, 2026, gives the provincial Minister of Transportation unilateral power to set fare prices, discount policies, transfer rules, and service standards for any transit system he designates — including the TTC. The TTC Board and Toronto City Council will have no formal role.

The legislation goes further than fare control. The Minister can prescribe geographic fare zones, meaning riders could pay different amounts depending on where they are going within the city — the first time in TTC history that a trip from Scarborough to Etobicoke could cost more than one from downtown to midtown. The bill also allows the province to apportion TTC fare revenue to other regional agencies, effectively subsidizing systems in Brampton, Mississauga, or Hamilton using money collected from Toronto riders. And it designates "priority routes" where the province — not the city — determines which operator provides service, opening the door to contracted-out bus routes.

The legislation contains no service level minimums, no worker protections, and no requirement that any fare changes come with compensating provincial funding. ATU Local 113 represents nearly 12,000 TTC workers. Its president Marvin Alfred put it plainly: the bill could allow the province to contract out TTC bus routes to private operators — something that has never happened in the TTC's history. The union, the TTC's own CEO Mandeep Lali, the TTC Board, and Toronto City Council are all on record against the bill. That degree of institutional unity in opposition is extraordinary.

Mayor Olivia Chow's two signature transit achievements — three consecutive years of fare freezes and a fare capping program that makes transit free after 47 trips per month — are directly threatened. Both policies are expressions of local democratic decisions about transit affordability. Once the province holds regulatory authority over fare structures and discount programs, those policies can be overridden or eliminated by ministerial order, without a council vote, without a TTC Board meeting, and without any public consultation requirement written into the legislation.

The most immediate risk is fare increases. As TTCriders Executive Director Andrew Pulsifer stated, "Toronto has one of the lowest fares in the region, so I think it's inevitable that if this goes through, fares will go up, which will have a disproportionate impact on those who can least afford it." A zone-based fare system — which the provincial government has floated — would charge more for longer trips, hitting residents in Scarborough, Etobicoke, and North York hardest. These are also among Toronto's lower-income communities with the highest transit dependency.

The union and advocacy sector see privatization as the logical endpoint. ATU Local 113 expects that once regulations under the Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act are written, the province will use them to contract out TTC bus routes on cross-boundary corridors to private operators. There are no provisions in the legislation preventing this. Under privatization, workers lose collective agreements that have governed TTC employment for a century; riders lose service quality guarantees; and the city loses the ability to set standards through an elected board.

The financial implications for Toronto are substantial. TTC fares are a core component of the city's operating budget. If fare revenue is redistributed to other GTHA transit agencies, or if the province sets fares below what Toronto needs to sustain service, the result is either service cuts or increased cost to the City — without any corresponding provincial operating subsidy. NDP MPP Jessica Bell has noted that Bill 98 does not restore provincial funding to cover 50% of municipal transit operating costs, which the province downloaded onto cities years ago.

Bill 98 is the latest in a pattern of Ford government bills that centralize power over institutions Torontonians rely on. The same legislative session produced Bill 110 seizing Billy Bishop Airport, Bill 5's Special Economic Zones that override municipal law, and the bike lanes removal via Bill 212. In each case, the mechanism is the same: legislation that removes local consent requirements and transfers authority to a provincial minister accountable only to a PC caucus. The TTC is not a niche issue — it is the backbone of daily life for over 500 million annual riders.