Premier Doug Ford announced on Tuesday his government is hoping to begin building Highway 413, one of its signature promises, next year.
With precursor fieldwork already underway, the provincial government intends to bring together “key private sector experts” in a couple of weeks to discuss moving the project forward, Ford said at a news conference in Caledon.
The Ford government also plans to begin meetings soon with impacted property owners, aiming to expedite land acquisitions this fall, according to a government news release.
Highway 413 is a proposed 52-kilometre highway that would connect Highway 400 just north of Vaughan to the Highway 401/407 interchange at the edge of Mississauga. It would stretch across York, Peel and Halton Regions.
Ford’s Progressive Conservatives have made the proposed highway central to their pitch to voters since 2018, arguing it’s needed to reduce the Greater Toronto Area’s infamous congestion issues. In the last provincial election, Highway 413 was one of the PCs’ “number 1 promises,” Ford said on Tuesday.
Ontario’s opposition parties, however, aren’t fans of the project. They argue it wouldn’t do much to solve the region’s traffic problems, while seriously harming the environment and contributing to urban sprawl and car dependency.
The provincial government first studied a similar project in 2008 while the Liberals were in power. Kathleen Wynne’s government shelved the plan in February 2018 following an unfavourable report by an expert panel. Ford revived the idea after his PCs’ election victory a few months later.
Over the last few years, Ford’s Tories have taken several steps to shorten various environmental assessment timelines and make land expropriation easier to speed up construction projects. In 2020, the province eliminated hearings where landowners could contest expropriation. A 2021 regulatory change let the province start construction before an environmental assessment was completed.
Earlier this year, the PCs introduced a bill to allow the government to expropriate land before an environmental assessment is finished. When passed, the Get It Done Act will allow the Tories to “begin expediting land acquisitions in the fall.”
The project was caught up in jurisdictional battles for nearly three years. In May 2021, the federal government designated it for an impact assessment, which essentially halted progress.
Earlier this year, key parts of the federal government's impact assessment regime were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The provincial and federal governments agreed this April to scrap a full-fledged impact assessment and instead strike a working group to resolve outstanding issues around environmental concerns.
With the province now hoping to get early works construction started in 2025, the project could be another hot-button issue in the 2026 provincial election.
While the government hasn’t disclosed how much building Highway 413 will cost, it’s expected to eclipse several billions of dollars.
The Ford government’s 2024 budget said it plans to spend $27.4 billion on building and rehabilitating highways over the next 10 years, including almost $3.9 billion this year. Highway 413 is its largest planned highway project.
The Ministry of Transportation’s spending estimates show it plans to put $150 million toward “third party works for highways” and about $17.4 million toward “highways and land transfers” in 2024-25. Overall, the ministry’s planned capital spending within the program for planning, designing, and otherwise paving the way for new highways was more than $100 million higher this year than last year.
During its construction, the Ford government says Highway 413 will “support” 3,500 jobs a year and contribute $350 million to the province’s real GDP.
Highway 413 is currently billed as a four- to six-lane highway, but documents obtained by The Trillium showed the province could expand it to 10 lanes.
