Bill 212 contains an…

Bill 212 contains an interesting juxtaposition: it expedites the process for building highways just as it adds a lengthy and subjective approval process for bike lane construction.

Though the bill's content belies its title - it has been long known and repeatedly proven that building and expanding highways does not reduce gridlock; rather, it induces further gridlock - this is somehow not its largest failing. Rather, the bill's fundamentally undemocratic nature is its most appalling quality. It is truly about expanding the provincial government's power to expropriate and trespass onto its constituents, as well as its ability to wantonly overrule municipal by-law as it so desires.

The criteria set out in the bill for expropriation and site inspection are immensely vague. Importantly, it requires absolutely no burden of proof in determining that an expropriation, modification to utilities, or site inspection be related to the Highway 413 project - it simply requires that it be deemed related to the project by the Minister.

Furthermore, at no point does it specify that the provincial government should take into account any factor related to utility infrastructure other than its hindrance to the Highway 413 project, nor does it provide any recourse for the utility or the persons affected by such a modification in the case that the Minister's request be unrealistic, poorly considered, or otherwise fallacious, other than by appeal to that same Minister.

A common thread in this bill is the selective exemption of municipal by-law towards its stated goals. Once again, the criteria provided here are vague, effectively allowing the Minister to decree that such an exemption is related to the concerned project as it wishes. In all cases, the law being exempted exists at the municipal level for very good reasons; the bill is unjustified in (and does not claim to justify) overriding it. By-laws that may well exist for the safety and well-being of the municipality's constituents can be reversed essentially by decree. That's not very democratic, is it?

Were such measures to be enacted in response to a situation causing a direct threat to life, well-being, or even economic stability, they might be justified, but the reality is that the bill incentivizes building infrastructure that kills Ontarians while impeding or at least slowing down the deployment of infrastructure that saves lives. Car crashes are by far the leading cause of death for non-elderly Ontarians; the choices made in this bill will help ensure that it remains as such for the foreseeable future. If this bill were truly about reducing gridlock and saving time, its content would be almost the perfect opposite: it would expedite the process for building transportation alternatives that increase modal shift, effectively reducing gridlock by providing road users a viable, even attractive, transportation alternative to a single-occupancy vehicle.

In summary, though the bill is short-sighted and misaligned with the outcome it claims to support, the real reason to definitively remove it from any consideration is its undemocratic nature and brazen disregard for the fundamental rights of Ontario's municipalities and constituents.