2004 to 2015) in the October 2015 election. The MPP for Cambridge is Belinda Karahalios of the New Blue Party of Ontario, who was first elected to this position in 2018. Municipal services Galt was an independent city in Waterloo County, Ontario until 1973 when amalgamation created the Regional Municipality of Waterloo. At that time, Galt was amalgamated into the new city of Cambridge. The Region handles many services, including Police, waste management, community health, transit, recreation, planning, roads and social services. The Region consists of the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo, and the townships of Woolwich, Wilmot, Wellesley, and North Dumfries. Public transportation Since 2000, local and regional transit throughout the Region of Waterloo has been provided by Grand River Transit (GRT), which was created by a merger of the former Cambridge Transit and Kitchener Transit. GRT operates a number of routes in Cambridge, four of which travel outside of the city: presently the 52, 61, and 72 buses run to southern Kitchener. The Ainslie St. Transit Terminal in Galt was the southern terminus of GRT's original iXpress route (later rebranded as the 200 iXpress after the addition of more routes), which ran through all three cities in the Region of Waterloo before terminating in the north at the Conestoga Mall terminal (later renamed Conestoga station) in Waterloo. The route was launched in 2005 as a part of the Regional Growth Management Strategy, which called for greater densification of urban cores, and was considered an intermediary step while more long-term rapid transit plans were still maturing. In June 2009 Regional Council voted to approve a plan to construct a light rail line, which has been named the Ion rapid transit. The first phase would run from Conestoga Mall in the north of Waterloo, to Fairview Park Mall in the south of Kitchener, while the second phase of the line would run from Fairview Mall to the Galt area of Cambridge. Mayor Doug Craig was a determined opponent of the plan, arguing that an expanded express bus system would be just as effective but much less expensive. By late February 2017, the Kitchener-Waterloo portion was well into the final phase of construction, but plans for the Cambridge section of the LRT were still in the very early stage. Public consultations were just getting started at the time. Three routes had been agreed on in 2011, with eight "endorsed" stops: