For all the things Waterloo Region’s tech community has going for it, population density is not one of them. And for people like Vidyard CEO Michael Litt, who are trying to scale their companies and take on the world, that’s a problem.
“What that means is, we don’t have a ton of access to really experienced leadership from a go-to-market, sales and marketing perspective,” Litt said Friday, as he waited for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne to arrive at his company’s offices in downtown Kitchener. “So, bridging the gap between the two communities – our technical capacity, and Toronto’s world-class centre of commerce – is actually essential to building a really strong innovation cluster where companies can grow and compete globally.”
As is well-known by now, bridging the gap between Waterloo Region’s thriving tech community and Toronto’s deep pools of capital and sales talent depends on faster, more reliable transportation links.
In other words, more trains.
Premier Wynne and a host of transportation officials came to Vidyard to discuss exactly that on Friday. She reiterated her government’s commitment, initially made in last month’s provincial budget, to put $11 billion into the first phase of a high-speed rail line to connect Toronto’s Union Station to London, Ont., with stops at Pearson Airport, Guelph and Kitchener. Service could start as early as 2025, and the trip from Kitchener to Union will take 48 minutes.
“I just want to say to you all that I am very committed to this; that this is something that has to happen,” Wynne told a crowd of Vidyard employees and local dignitaries, adding that trains are the issue she hears most about whenever she visits Waterloo Region.
“This is clearly a very important part of getting this new economy right, and that connectivity is so important for your businesses,” she said.
The Premier also announced progress on earlier commitments to bring two-way, all-day GO train service to Kitchener from Toronto, with two key environmental assessments and the hiring of a technical advisor on the project now moving forward.
The province is also working with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority to connect the improved GO train service to a proposed multimodal transit hub at Pearson Airport, which would enable seamless connections from Waterloo Region to international destinations.
Premier Wynne acknowledged the length of time it has taken to move these improvements along, noting that “we’ve had to work with many partners,” including Canadian National Railways, which operates freight service in the Kitchener-to-Toronto rail corridor. Since passenger rail service must operate on a separate line from freight, it means twinning a significant portion of the rail line, which involves widening bridges, acquiring land and other measures.
Asked by a reporter why building new rail in Ontario seems to take so much longer than in other countries, and whether some kind of public-private partnership might speed things along, the Premier said “we want to do this as quickly as possible. There’s no benefit to us to do it slower than people expect.” She pointed out that it also takes time to consult with the people directly affected by construction of a major rail line, a “disruptive” project that not everyone will want to see rushed into operation.
David Collenette, a former federal transportation minister who now leads Ontario’s High Speed Rail Advisory Board, acknowledged that “in other countries they seem to be able to build things much more quickly. On the other hand, we have a very rigorous environmental assessment process in this country that I think all Canadians are proud of, so we don’t want to diminish the input of people to make their views known.
“We shouldn’t just focus on speed,” Collenette said. “We’d like to, but we have to do it properly.”
An audience member asked whether express GO bus service to Toronto could be improved, particularly on weekends, in the interim period until better rail service is in place in 2024. Phil Verster, President and CEO of Metrolinx, the agency that manages regional transit in Southern Ontario, said the agency would look at options for interim GO improvements.
