We don’t need more highways…

We don’t need more highways to combat traffic and long travel times. Every study on increased lanes and more highways induces demand for car travel and we end up with more traffic and longer travel times. It’s something we should have learned a long time ago with highway 401 and its endless expansion from its very inception. Studies on Highway 413 have shown that it will only alleviate traffic in the short term and then cause travel times to become much longer. We need to invest in alternative modes of travel to alleviate traffic.

Financially, these projects for Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass, and others are going to be super expensive and cost the taxpayers billions to construct and maintain. The 407 took 14 years to complete so it’s most likely that we won't see highway 413 for decades even with everything the Provincial government is trying to expedite this process. At the end of it all we won’t even save travel time.

The Premier has already been told by Ontarians and the Federal government that we don’t want him paving through the Greenbelt. Instead of listening to any of us, the Premier and the PC’s decided to write Bill 212 so included a small section on bike lanes (1.5 pages of the 28 page bill) and made that the talking point. That way the public wouldn’t notice that he and his government put things in Bill 212 like exceptions to the Environmental Assessment Act so they could start construction of certain items before completing a limited environmental impact assessment. If the environmental impact assessment says by building these highways you’re going to do major damage to the wetlands, protected native species and the environment at large, how are you going to fix that when the construction has already begun? Hide the assessment from the public under the new clause in Bill 212 that allows the government to keep it secret if they “contain information about sensitive natural or cultural heritage matters”? Any environmental assessment is basically guaranteed to have information on sensitive or cultural heritage matters so I guess we’ll never know the damage you’ll do until it’s far too late.

I would also really appreciate the Provincial government being open about whether or not Highway 413 will be a toll road. What reason do you have for Bill 212 to include a clause to expedite the construction of broadband for highways if not tolls?

There seems to be a total disregard for municipalities and Ontarians in general in this bill. We don’t want 24-hour construction and you shouldn’t be able to override most municipal bylaws that ban or limit such practices. I also don’t agree with more projects being given this priority status in the future. You can’t just force highways and other construction projects through because that’s what you want.

It’s exhausting having to tell this government to just listen to the experts like engineers (see the response from the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers) and Ontarians instead of just forcing through whatever they want to do for them and their buddies. It seems that if you don’t like it then they’ve thought of that too with increased fines for anyone who interrupts construction. Yet another part of Bill 212 I object to.