I think what Brampton has had, more than anything, is very ineffectual representation at Queens Park. For fun I searched Hansard.......searching for the word "Brampton" with the subject matter of GO Transit.
It reveals that this combination has only been raised in the Ontario legislature 9 times - since 1981!.
Of those 9 times:
7 of them are inconsequential references to Brampton along with other communities.....
1 is a soft question lobbed by a Brampton member at the then minister of transportation so that he could announce the opening of Mount Pleasant station
the 9th is a member from Brampton defending the Blue 22 (now Union Pearson Express) train to the airport against opposition from the Weston Community.
So, in the last 32 years, there does not seem to be any record of any MPP from Brampton (government or opposition) standing up in the house and asking "When will there be all day GO service to Brampton?" or "When will the citizens of Brampton get equal return on the transit file for their tax dollars that citizens in Oakville and Pickering and other communities near the lake get".
The question has just never been asked on their behalf.
I know that only a portion of the work that a MPP or Minister does gets done in the house (i guess that is why we give them offices and phones
) but it really is surprising that while I have been asking members, ministers of Transportation, heads of GO, GO people this very question for 25 years....no one elected to ask those types of questions ever has.
I am going to resist the urge to do a similar search for "Brampton" "population to hospital bed ratio"....I think it might explain too much