Provincial transit agency Metrolinx has shed more than 400 consultants over the past year as its new boss looks to reduce its reliance on third-parties and bring the transit-building expertise in-house.

Michael Lindsay, who previously served as the CEO of Infrastructure Ontario, was tapped to lead the Crown corporation in 2025, tasked with refocusing its mandate and bringing years-delayed transit lines into service for the first time.

The agency has faced criticism over its heavy reliance on external consultants and growing number of executives as it morphed from its inception as a transit operator into its current state as a planner, builder and operator.

In an exclusive sit-down interview with Focus Ontario, Lindsay said when he took over from former Metrolinx boss Phil Verster, he tried to investigate why so many consultants were on the books.

Lindsay eventually realized the dramatic expansion of the mandate under Premier Doug Ford’s watch — from planning to construction management and operation — forced the agency to rely on external experts.

“I think the organization needed to grow quite quickly, to try to get relevant subject matter expertise fast in order to plan and get through the procurement and early stages of delivery of (GO expansion),” he explained.

“But I did ask a lot of those questions because one of the lessons that I think we have learned as a region is clarity in respect of accountability and an ability to make decisions quickly, and to do it in a way that is diffused, not every decision has to come to the office of the CEO. And probably shouldn’t in order to maintain progress.”

Since taking over, Lindsay appears to have made a conscious choice to try to shift the organization from its previous consultant-heavy and legally-focused approach.

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At a recent board meeting, he told reporters one of the key lessons he had learned from the Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s delay-plagued construction was to be less trigger-happy with legal action.

“We have to always remember that our primary objective is to bring these transit lines into being as opposed to sitting on our rights, insisting on a legal strategy,” he said.

“That’s the thing that we are trying to do as we show up in these projects. And to the credit of our private partners, I think they’re trying to do the same.”

Another part of that approach appears to be consultants.

While it’s not clear exactly how many consultants Metrolinx had at its peak, a spokesperson said more than 400 full-time and part-time contracts had ended since Lindsay took over.

Many of those agreements were in the agency’s planning division, with others touching procurement for its massive projects. Some deals ended naturally once the Finch West LRT and the Eglinton Crosstown LRT opened in December and February. Most, however, were unrelated to those projects.

Lindsay said he had convinced some of the third parties to join Metrolinx full-time, taking on senior leadership positions and drawing salaries instead.

“There’s been reductions in the total complement of both Metrolinx as an organization, but also, even more significantly, a sharp reduction in the number of third-party consultants that are around,” he said.

“With many of those third-party consultants, I’m delighted to say, converting to be Metrolinx full-time employees, bringing their subject matter expertise in a durable way to this region.”

Consultants who switched to the organization’s roster would likely have come in around the level of vice-president, an area which has also been heavily criticized.

In 2024, Metrolinx had 118 staff with the words “vice-president” in their title. They earned an average salary of $243,000 annually. Among its ranks in 2024, Metrolinx had a vice-president responsible for the Hamilton LRT, another in charge of the Hurontario LRT and a third vice-president of the Finch West LRT.

Lindsay said there are currently between 115 and 120 VPs at the organization, which represents five per cent of the 7,000-person workforce — a number Lindsay insisted was “fairly standard” for a major corporation.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said she wasn’t convinced the changes were an improvement.

“The problem with Metrolinx is they just keep growing and growing and they’re out of control. Nothing they’ve done so far has worked to deliver service on budget and on time,” she said.

“I think that there’s more than enough reasons that we can’t trust either the Metrolinx CEO or the premier’s government to provide transparency and accountability for Metrolinx.”

Lindsay himself said Metrolinx had grown exponentially because its responsibilities had ballooned.

Asked if he thought the organization should be split into a construction agency and another tasked with operations, he disagreed.

“I’d say in GO (Transit), in particular, the link between the operations and the capital plan is actually rather critical because there is simply no way to expand this GO network without a clearly-linked plan of what you’re going to do from an operations perspective,” he said.

“Of all the dimensions of the build mission that’s we’ve got, this one house, under one roof link between the operations of GO and the construction of GO expansion make an incredible amount of space.”

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