The Ford government tabled legislation Monday that would allow the province to speed up the construction of highways and restrict where municipalities can build bike lanes.
The bill would also allow the government to speed up priority highway projects — the Highway 413, Bradford Bypass, Garden City Skyway bridge, and others to be named in the future — by shortening the property expropriation process and introducing new offences and penalties for obstructing access for field investigations or damaging equipment on these projects.
It would also allow for around-the-clock construction on priority highway projects, freeze fees for driver testing, and speed up expropriations for broadband infrastructure, among other measures.
The 413
The bill, if passed, would cancel the Highway 413 environmental assessment (EA) process that began in 2007 and allow early work on the highway to proceed.
Highway 413 is a planned expressway that would stretch from the western edge of Mississauga, where the 407 ETR meets the 401, curve around Brampton, travel through the Greenbelt, and reach the 400 at the northern edge of Vaughan. It is among the most controversial of the Ford government’s planned highway projects because it is expected to have a high environmental impact and, while the government has not released a cost estimate for the project, the auditor general has pegged it at $4 billion, with critics expecting it to cost more than double that.
Its environmental assessment began in 2007, with broad consideration of different routes across the region. Stage 2 of the EA, meant to refine the route, began in 2014 but was then suspended in 2015 on orders from the Liberal government of the day, which appointed an advisory panel to reconsider the project. That panel recommended the project be cancelled, which the government accepted.
Ford's Progressive Conservatives campaigned on restarting the EA in the 2018 election, and it resumed in 2019. As of last fall, the environmental assessment was nearing the end of stage 2, which was expected to be followed by a class EA process and then construction.
The new legislation, if passed, would set out an abbreviated environmental assessment process that would require the ministry to create and follow an Indigenous consultation, but not require it to complete any additional environmental studies. It would also allow the minister to keep secret any studies he deems to "contain information about sensitive natural or cultural heritage matters."
Asked why his government needs that power, Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria didn't directly answer, but said the project has undergone multiple rounds of public consultation already.
"Ultimately, we know that we need to get highways built. We need to ensure that shovels get in the ground and that people are spending less time in traffic," he said.
The project's pace had accelerated since the spring when the federal government abandoned its plans to conduct its own environmental assessment of the project. Instead, it formed a working group with the province on the highway. Sarkaria was asked if the federal government was aware of the province's plans to drop its EA, but did not give a clear answer.
"I think the federal government also understands and appreciates the challenges of gridlock, the traffic, the population growth that has occurred in this province," he said.
A request to federal environmental minister Steven Guilbeault's office for comment was not answered by deadline.
Environmental Defence has been calling on the federal government to redesignate the project for a federal environmental assessment. Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, said the province's move to end its environmental assessment "makes it almost impossible" for the federal government not to do so now.
"When you have a province that's saying that they're exempting a project of this scope and scale, with so many impacts on federal values from its own environmental assessment legislation, it really makes it more incumbent on the federal government to say, 'Well, that's nice, but we haven't decided to give up protecting values in Ontario just because the Ontario government is going to," he said.
The federal government still has areas of jurisdiction it could assert that could involve the highway, without redesignating the project, including fisheries, species at risk, navigable waters and Indigenous values, according to Gray.
However, the province's plan to cancel the provincial environmental assessment process and replace it with the new, abbreviated process would mean that the federal government will abandon plans for further study of some of those issues, said Gray.
"This rush to build Highway 413, and legislating specifically to bulldoze the environment, just shows that this highway isn't viable, isn't necessary, and that there are better alternatives out there," Gray said.
In August, The Trillium reported on internal government records showing the province knows the 413 won’t end the surrounding region's gridlock, despite government MPPs' frequent suggestions that it will.
The documents include projections of travel times, speed, and congestion in 2041 under various scenarios, including depending on the number of lanes the 413 has and what other transportation projects are completed. They are based on the government’s multimodal travel demand and forecasting tool, the Greater Golden Horseshoe Model.
Maps included in the internal documents show incredibly slow typical commute speeds — in the teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s km/hr range on 400-series highways — to and from Toronto during peak travel times in 2041, whether the 413 has four, six, or eight lanes, and whether or not the MTO’s other potential projects are completed.
While the highway would save a half-hour in travel time for trips from one end of the highway to the other, just 1,200 commuters are expected to take that trip in an average morning commute, the documents show.
Bike lanes
The bill would also prohibit municipalities from building bike lanes that would reduce any lanes of car traffic without provincial permission and require them to hand over information about existing bike lanes, which Sarkaria and Premier Doug Ford have said will be used to evaluate whether or not they should be removed.
Asked whether the province or the municipality would have to pay if a bike lane is ordered removed, Sarakria didn't answer.
"Well, look," he said, "we'll continue to work with the municipal partners on that and ensure that we have a co-ordinated approach on that."
A spokesperson for the minister later told Village Media the province would pay.
