The interurban first option DOES have an interesting possibility for making “Hespeler Rd only” viable. Tram trains from Guelph, running down a shared bus / tram ROW on Hespeler to Galt would be a meaningful enhancement to Ion BRT, get the Guelph service running, commit to LRT eventually and do it all without the really big ticket infrastructure pieces on Stage 2.
With that said, the record has the gist right. A connection on the central corridor IS needed, and it’s only going to get more costly. This shouldn’t have been decoupled in any substantial way from the original project, and delaying now serves only to botch Ion overall, hurt regional land use plans and damage the credibility of any staged transit plans provincewide.