At a hastily convened press conference held outside Montreal’s Beaubien Métro station about a week before the federal election, Liberal candidates Mélanie Joly, Steven Guilbeault, Rachel Bendayan and Geneviève Hinse announced the funding of the Pink Line, a proposed major expansion of Montreal’s primary mass-transit system.

That same week, commuters in Ottawa discovered the new trains of the $2-billion Confederation Line have started breaking down after only a month’s service. Public transit congestion was further aggravated because Ottawa had withdrawn bus service into the city centre, in part to ensure the use of the light-rail system intended to reverse nearly a decade of declining ridership. The Confederation Line, product of a public-private partnership, was delivered two years late and exacerbated the very downtown congestion it was meant to alleviate.