This is a flawed bill that…

This is a flawed bill that should not be passed as written.

Premier Ford and the government have had 6 years of a majority government to reduce gridlock yet have failed to deliver any of their promised transit projects. Gridlock is a serious issue, but this government is using bike lanes as a scapegoat for its dismal track record on transit.

The Premier is not letting municipalities decide what is best for them with this proposed legislation. He is adding more red tape and forcing cities to get provincial approval for bike lanes. I believe that municipalities are quite capable of making decisions about bike lanes on their own. Removing bike lanes puts cyclists in more danger, leading to more accidents, injuries and deaths while causing further delays on our roads.

This bill claims that the government is committed to balancing environmental protection with the need to support crucial infrastructure development that will benefit the economy. But I don’t see balance here. Instead, this bill does away with environmental protections in favour of creating projects that favour developer friends of Premier Ford. He is not putting the people of Ontario at the centre of his decisions, but rather, the profit to be made by interested stakeholders who have contributed to Ford’s campaigns. This is corruption and is unacceptable.

This bill paves the way to build Highway 413 without a proper environmental study, even though it is known that the highway would specifically impact 85 waterways, 220 wetlands, put at risk at least 10 different species and hundreds of acres of vulnerable wildlife habitat. The building of Highway 413will encourage urban sprawl through induced demand, as research shows that building new highways tends to attract more drivers and fails to improve congestion levels on other roads. It would increase car dependency in surrounding areas and ultimately only save commuters around 30 to 60 seconds of travel time.

Instead of building more highways and more urban sprawl, we should be building affordable and reliable public transit including investing in GO Transit Regional Express Rail. Let people get to work faster while getting work done and spending less money instead of sitting in traffic and increasing carbon emissions. So many better ways of easing gridlock have been suggested, such as working with the owners of Highway 407 to increase capacity on that highway, or subsidizing truck drivers to use Highway 407.

Do better by the people of Ontario.