Part III — Who decides · Chapter 12

Bill 98 and the Migration of Power

Working chapter of Why can’t Toronto move? — the report’s summary page uses only claims that passed our receipt check. Figures below marked ⚠️ are still in the re-verification queue, labelled honestly rather than hidden. How that works: check our work.

Status: developing (as of July 2026). What's settled: Bill 98 is law, its fare-setting powers are real, and the date is pinned to the legislative record. What's undetermined: the actual fare structure, zones, and compensation terms the province will set under it — the regulations that decide what any of this means for a rider's next fare card. This chapter updates when those implementing regulations are filed; until then, treat everything below the "what's undetermined" line as exactly that.

What's settled. Bill 98, the Building Homes and Improving Transportation Infrastructure Act, 2026, was introduced in March 2026 and passed the Legislature in mid-May 2026 over the objections of Toronto City Council and TTC's unions. It received Royal Assent on June 2, 2026 — a date fixed in the Hansard record of the Assent proceedings themselves, not a press release. Schedule 4 of the Act enacts the Fare Alignment and Seamless Transit Act, 2026, in force from the moment of Assent. It gives Ontario's Minister of Transportation the legal power to determine fare structures, discounts, transfer policies, service standards, priority-route designation, and regional fare and service integration for transit systems across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area — the TTC named explicitly among the systems the Minister can designate. This is a genuine transfer of authority that, since amalgamation, had functionally sat with the TTC Board and City Council: the price of a TTC fare.

Toronto Council's response shows exactly how one-sided the fight was. A Council motion warned the province could gain "broad power over transit fares, service standards, route integration, transfers, regional coordination, and collective bargaining agreements" while leaving Toronto responsible for any resulting shortfall — and then voted to support amendments and formally object, because a formal objection was the only tool available. Council had no statutory veto over a provincial bill. Opposition briefly united three groups that don't usually stand together: TTC management, publicly focused on protecting local service and a reliable operating subsidy; ATU Local 113, which wanted the bill's reach limited to cross-boundary routes and demanded compensation for any resulting fare changes; and TTCriders, warning that fare integration could put fare capping, the two-hour transfer, and concession fares at risk. The one constituency that welcomed the bill, the Toronto Region Board of Trade, still asked the province to guarantee municipal agencies are "fully compensated for fare revenue impacts" and "meaningfully engaged in implementation" — a marker of how little confidence even Bill 98's supporters have that the details will simply take care of themselves. The TTC Board itself endorsed a set of principles on April 16, 2026 to guide staff participation in the province's regulatory consultations, meaning the Board is now negotiating the terms of a power transfer it opposed in substance, rather than exercising the power itself.

What's undetermined. Everything that actually determines what a rider pays is still unwritten. The Act sets out what the Minister may do; it does not itself set a single fare, zone boundary, discount rate, or transfer rule. TTCriders has explicitly framed the coming regulatory phase — not the legislative fight that just concluded — as "the real fight," and that framing holds up: the legislation was the argument over who gets to decide, and it is over. The regulations are the argument over what gets decided, and it has not started in public. As of the most recent reporting available when this corpus was closed, the province had not confirmed it had formally designated the TTC under the Act's fare-setting provisions specifically. That makes this a real, legally armed governance shift that has not yet been exercised against the TTC by name — a distinction worth holding onto, because reporting it as either "nothing has changed" or "TTC fares are already provincially set" would both be wrong.

What's actually at stake in the regulations, based on what riders' and workers' advocates have named publicly: whether Fair Pass and other City-designed discount programs keep their current shape; whether the two-hour transfer window survives a province-wide standard; whether concession fares for seniors, students, and low-income riders are preserved or reset; and whether the province compensates the TTC for any net revenue loss the new structure causes, or leaves the City to absorb it. None of these questions has a public answer yet. Anyone treating this chapter's account of Bill 98's powers as equivalent to an account of Toronto's future fares is reading past what the record currently supports.

Update trigger. This chapter is current only through the corpus close and should be re-read, not assumed, once any of the following happens: the implementing regulations are filed; the province formally designates the TTC under the Act; or the TTC Board's regulatory-consultation principles produce a public position on fare structure specifically. None of those had occurred as of this writing.