Matt Elliott has been writing about Toronto city hall for nine years, starting as a blogger during the tumultuous tenure of Mayor Rob Ford. He writes City Hall Watcher, a weekly newsletter digging deep into the details of the policy and politics of Toronto’s municipal government, at CityHallWatcher.com.

Join me, would you, on a journey — a journey of pure imagination.

Cast your mind to an alternate reality where instead of this federal election being about, well, whatever it’s been about, it was about two issues that always dominate the conversation at Toronto City Hall: transit and affordable housing.

In this gumdrop fantasyland, voters would have heard lots from all the major party leaders about what they plan to do to build way more transit and way more housing all across Canada.

The topics surely would have merited more than scattered mentions in last week’s English federal leaders’ debate. Instead, the word “housing” was uttered only 10 times — nine by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh — and “transit” came up only twice.

There’s good reason to want and demand more discussion of these issues in the federal campaign.

Yes, sure, they’re critically important to Toronto. The TTC is currently trying to scratch together a whopping $23.7 billion by 2033 just to keep existing infrastructure in working condition. Meanwhile, the median price of a home in Toronto is more than $900,000, and the city’s jam-packed shelters suggest a whole lot of people can’t come anywhere close to affording that.

But wanting more focus on these issues isn’t just a whiny centre-of-the-universe Toronto thing. Because affordable housing and transit policy are also critical to responding to an issue federal leaders have spent time talking about: climate change.

According to federal statistics, the transportation sector is the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, spewing out 25 per cent of all emissions. Of the 174 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emitted from transportation in 2017, 85.1 megatonnes came from passenger vehicles.

Electric cars can help reduce that, but the real silver bullet is spending big on transit and affordable housing. Transit done right can get people out of cars entirely and truly affordable housing can let people live within a walk, bike ride or transit trip of work, helping avoid mega-length car commutes.

To give them some credit, if you dig into their platforms, the major parties do have something to say on these issues.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals point to the progress they’ve helped make over the last four years, in particular with their shift to a formula that awards transit funds to municipalities based on ridership, and $1.3 billion in support for repairing Toronto Community Housing units. It’s more support from a federal partner than city hall has received in decades.

The Conservatives led by Andrew Scheer aren’t as big on talking dollars, though they have promised to bring back a tax credit for public transit use and work with Premier Doug Ford to deliver his proposed transit projects.

The NDP plan commits to build 500,000 affordable housing units across the country over the next decade and takes a daring stance on transit, with Singh making a pledge to “build a path toward fare-free transit.” That’s one hell of a way to solve the TTC’s woes with the Presto fare card system.

Elizabeth May’s Green Party has pledged 25,000 new and 15,000 fixed-up affordable housing units nationally per year, and the creation of a dedicated transit fund of $3.4 billion a year for municipalities. The bold part? They’re calling for a ban on the sale of gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2030.

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Some big ideas worth talking about and debating, but so far, that’s happening more in our world of imagination than it is in this real one.

With the campaign almost over, it’s a missed opportunity. Commitments to fighting climate change and achieving targets are fine, but real progress will happen with tangible action at the city level on the housing and transit files. The solutions are in the places we live and the ways we move. An election seems a good time to talk more about that.