Why Doug Ford thinks the PC’s ticket to reelection is a highway

Jordan This will likely come as no surprise to anyone who remembers his brother’s political style.

Rob Ford Clips …the people of the city have spoken loud and clear. They want subways folks. They want subways, subways, subways…

…folks, this is the future of Toronto: underground transit, subway expansion…

…I was elected on subways. They want subways. I was out on Saturday, people want subways. That’s it…

Jordan Ontario Premier Doug Ford faces an election next year in which many things will be on the ballot, especially his government’s COVID-19 response. But Ford would like to make absolutely certain that one issue stands out.

Doug Ford Clips …building highway 413, a transit and highway corridor across the regions, will save commuters up to 30 minutes one way, 60 minutes, two ways…

…we need more people to get from Point A to Point B in a much more faster fashion…

…that’s why our government is fully funding the construction of the Bradford Bypass. This project is a critical part of our plan that’s building Ontario…

Jordan In a region choked with traffic every day, the idea of two new highways might entice many commuters to cast a ballot for the Progressive Conservatives. But what does a little digging on these two marquee projects reveal? What will they cost? How much time will they actually save commuters? Where will they be built? And on top of what exactly? And with so many issues facing Ontario, why does the Ontario PC government want to focus on these highways? Highways that, even if they go ahead, may not be in use for years.

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Emma McIntosh is an Ontario based reporter with the Narwhal. She has been covering these highway projects for months, if not years now, right Emma?

Emma Over a year.

Jordan So why don’t we start with…? I’m not going to ask you to delve into the Progressive Conservative strategy, but how focused has Premier Doug Ford been lately on the messaging around highways heading into next year’s election?

Emma Well, Jordan, let me tell you, they are very focused on highways. If you remember, like back in the Rob Ford days of Toronto City Council, the Fords are always talking about, like subways, subways, subways or the war on the car. Well, everything old is new again. And here we are. And now it’s highways, highways, highways. And it’s a huge focus.

Jordan We played that clip in our intro, the Subway subway clip, because the similarities are striking.

Emma It really is. Time is a flat circle. And so the PCs are betting, basically, that highways are going to be an ideological wedge that will work for them this time, just as well as driving was last time. And we’ll see.

Jordan Well, this is where I get to play the useful idiot a little bit, and you’ll find me doing that a few times throughout this interview. But Toronto traffic is horrible, like it’s legitimately awful. How quantifiably bad is it? Can we actually compare ourselves to any other major cities?

Emma Yeah. I think a ream of studies have shown that we are right up there with the world’s worst. Some places said 6th worst for commuters. One study that made me feel sick to my stomach last year showed that Toronto drivers lost, like, a total of six days over 2019 to gridlock alone. So they quantified how many basketball games that was. It’s like, 70. So, yeah, the scientific analysis of that is that we are down bad and the traffic here is definitely an issue.

Jordan So here’s the idiot part of my useful idiot. We need some new highways then, right? These are good. They will cut people’s commute time and help with gridlock.

Emma One would think, but it doesn’t actually work that way.

Jordan Explain that.

Emma Yeah. So there’s this concept called induced demand. It’s kind of like the fundamental law of traffic planning that literally no one ever listens to. But it is real. For decades, scientists have documented this phenomenon, and it’s that when you build new roads, what we think would happen would be like, wow, there’s more space, therefore, more cars fit on it. Amazing. We’re not as blocked up.

But that doesn’t happen. They actually tend to attract new drivers. And then the road after a couple of years is just as congested and just as crowded as it was before. It doesn’t actually solve anything. You basically get this short term period of relief, and before you know it, you’re right back to square one. Just with a bigger highway or a new highway.

Jordan And more cars in your city.

Emma Exactly. And more greenhouse gas emissions from the cars.

Jordan We’ll talk about the overall impacts of this at the end. But first, for people who are unfamiliar who haven’t been following a highway project for more than a year now, explain about highway 413. Give us the larger context for people outside the GTA as well, in terms of location and how long this project’s been around and what it aims to do.

Emma For sure. So highway 413 the focus of my life for the last year. So I guess we should zoom out a bit: there are two big highway projects that Doug Ford is working on, and of the two of them, highway 413 is the splashier one. It’s the one that gets more of the hype and the attention. In my humble opinion, it’s also more of a long shot, and we’ll get into that.

So it’s about 60 km long. It’s in Toronto’s outer suburbs, or it would be if they build it. And it goes from Vaughan to the north to around Milton area to the west. It roughly follows the path of highway 407, which is a toll highway. It’s just a bit further north, and its price tag is estimated to be anywhere between, like, $6 billion and $10 billion, although those are actually pretty outdated estimates. So it might actually be a lot higher.

Jordan Is that expensive for a highway?

Emma That’s like, pretty expensive. But it’s also par for the course in terms of highways. They’re big projects right? Here’s the thing, though, with the 413, it was already axed by a previous government. The Liberals studied this thing to death, and they found a couple of things that were wrong. It would only save drivers about 30 to 60 seconds on average. So that’s strike number one. The other issue is that it would have quite a significant environmental impact.

And because it’s been studied so much, I can give you a very detailed laundry list of what that would be. It would cut through, like 100 acres of farmland, 85 waterways, 220 wetlands, ten endangered species habitat, and a couple of hundred acres of protected green belt land. And the Ontario government is seeking to fast track this without doing an in depth environmental assessment.

Jordan Why hasn’t it been built already, then? Doug Ford and his pals have been around for a few years now. We’re almost to the next election. They’ve been ready to do this since they got into power right? Unless I’m wrong, why hasn’t it happened yet?

Emma Well, the short answer is Ottawa. Last spring, there was kind of this uprising of citizen opposition to highway 413. And slowly, one by one, the municipalities along the route of the highway yanked their support for it. And at the same time, environmentalists made a request for the federal government to step in. And after a couple of months of thinking about it, the federal government came back and said, oh, yeah, we would love to. We are going to step in.

And so now the project is kind of stalled indefinitely while the Feds and the provincial government hash out what’s going to happen next and whether the federal government will do a full review. But that’s another reason why I feel like this one’s a long shot. The longer this goes on, the more expensive it gets, and the less likely it is that it will happen. Frankly, I don’t think it’s very likely that it will have shovels in the ground by the next election.

Jordan I’m not going to ask you to recap a year of reporting in detail, but I think for the people in Toronto and not, who are familiar with this story, one of the things that keeps coming up is these accusations of shady links between developers and the Premier, and what we know about who’s getting what out of this deal. What’s true about that and what’s maybe exaggerated?

Emma Well, I think, for starters, there’s no allegation here that the developers have done anything wrong. But it is true that developers own a ton of land around the 413’s proposed route. When I was in my previous job with National Observer, we did a collaborative investigation with the Toronto Star. We found that a bunch of very powerful developers own thousands of acres of land. And one fundamental principle here is that access to transportation like a highway drives up land values. And so especially if the developers are allowed to build along the 413, if it’s actually constructed, they stand to make a lot of money. Millions and millions and millions of dollars.

And a lot of those developers who own the land are very well connected. A lot of them are big Progressive Conservative donors. Some of them have deep ties to the Progressive Conservatives beyond that. For instance, the guy who ran Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s leadership campaign back in 2018 when she wanted to have Doug Ford’s job. He is now a lobbyist working for some of these developers, lobbying the government. That guy says that he didn’t discuss the 413 on his client’s behalf. But it brings up this broader question of why the government is doing this now and why they’re seeking to do it so quickly and who it benefits.

We know from the beginning that the four government has been very friendly to developers. With the concept of induced demand, we know that this might not end up helping commuters that much. So who’s it for? That’s a big question.

Jordan And yeah, there’s no allegations of any illegal activity. But what does the government and maybe even Ford himself, if he’s been asked the question, how do they defend those links with developers? And what do they say about that aspect of the project?

Emma They’re pretty tight lipped on that. They make it clear that they don’t believe that they’ve done anything wrong. And they say that the highway is being built to benefit commuters. One line they talk about a lot, and especially the transportation Minister, Caroline Mulroney talks about this a lot, is that congestion robs people of time with their families. And so they also contest the whole figure about it only saving 30 to 60 seconds. They say it would actually be more like half an hour, although they have not shared the study that figure is based on. But their line is basically we are trying to give you an extra half hour to be home with your family.

Jordan What about the other highway? Tell me about that one.

Emma The Bradford Bypass. This is the highway 413’s slightly forgotten cousin, but it’s not forgotten by me. And I think the Bradford bypass might even be a more interesting and complex story.

Jordan Why?

Emma I think this one’s a lot juicier because there’s not as much of a consensus about it. So to start it’s a bit further north. It would connect the 400 with the 404. Those are the two main routes that lead out of Toronto going north. So if you’re ever trying to go to cottage country from the city, you’re probably taking one or both of them. It’s about 16 km. And if we want to drill down on the suburbs it would go through, it would go through Bradford, West Gwillimbury and East Gwillimbury, kind of south of Lake Simcoe. So it’s a bit further out, less suburban and more rural, more farms.

And we don’t really know as much about it because it wasn’t studied as extensively as the 413 before it was axed. The McGuinty government actually shelved it. They were talking at the time about addressing congestion with public transit, and it was one of a couple of things that they set aside. The Wynne government brought it back, but then kind of left it dormant until the PCs stepped in. And so now it is on the table again. This one would also run through the Greenbelt.

And here is the slightly more contentious part. The Ford government recently floated the idea of doing a very slight route change. It would just be a little dip on a map. And what this would do, would allow the route of the highway to go around a golf course. And also in my previous job with National Observer, working in collaboration with the Toronto Star, we found that this golf course is co owned by the associate Minister of Transportation, Stan Cho’s Father.

In response, the government told us that Stan Cho has not been involved with the routing of the highway, that he actually has declared a conflict of interest on that. And so he’s not privy to any decisions there. Obviously, it does not look good, and that has caused a bit of controversy at Queens Park in the last couple of weeks. That’s why I find this highway more interesting. There’s a lot more going on.

Jordan When you say stuff like that, I feel a little skeptical. It kind of seems like it’s something most people might be skeptical of. What’s the feeling around Queens Park, the people that cover this government, people who are close observers of it in terms of why this is happening?

Emma I think the big overarching feeling is that this really doesn’t look good. What some critics are saying is that someone can have declared a conflict and bureaucrats who are in charge of the file, for example, can still be aware of what’s going on or decisions can still be made that favour. Now, Minister Mulroney has also been very clear that she says her office has not been involved, it’s all technical decision making made by the bureaucrats.

In that sense, some of the chatter around Queens Park is just that this whole thing is an error in judgment. That Stan Cho was appointed to this file in June. He became the associate Minister of transportation in June, and this route change was proposed a couple of months before that. That’s a difficult position to put Stan Cho into. And I think that’s where a big focus of the criticism I’ve heard has been.

Jordan Let’s talk about the highway itself then. In terms of the bypass, when we talk about environmentalists being upset or it going through the Greenbelt, I’m going to play Devil’s advocate, I looked at the map, it looks like a very small part of the Greenbelt that it’s going through, and new roads to Cottage country are badly needed.

Emma Well, we could get into it over whether a new road is the best way to address it. But you’re right that if you are trying to get to Cottage Country or back from Cottage Country, I’m thinking like a summer Friday or Sunday night. You are having a bad time.

Jordan Oh it’s horrible.

Emma It’s a bad time. There was an incident last summer where I almost had to pay late fees on returning a rental car due to the nightmare that is getting between the 400 and the 404. I’m very sympathetic. So no one’s disputing that there’s an issue there. The problem is that the environmental sensitivity here is very significant.

So this part of the Greenbelt that it runs through is called the Holland Marsh. The Holland Marsh is really special. This was an area that was one gigantic wetland, and settlers in the 1900s saw potential in the muck soil at the bottom and drained it so that they could start up some agriculture. And today the Holland Marsh produces some of the best carrots and onions around. If you’re at your local farmer’s market, chances are you’re picking up some stuff from the Holland Marsh. It’s some of the finest soil in Canada.

With a highway running through that area, there are a lot of concerns. Road salt is one thing, but I think one of the huge outstanding issues with this highway is the fact that it hasn’t really been studied as well. The last environmental assessment that it received was finished up in 1997. So for some perspective, that is the year after my birth, okay. 1997 was the year that Princess Diana died, Titanic, I believe, had just come out or would come out that year. This was a while ago and a lot has changed in terms of our priorities as a society, how we want to address gridlock, our understanding of climate change and the legal regime is totally different, too.

Now, given all that, that 1997 set of studies identified some very serious problems that the provincial government says it is attempting to address through some new studies, but it’s not doing another full assessment. So those issues were groundwater pollution, air pollution with some contaminants like benzene, which is a carcinogen, it could be higher than what’s recommended by the current air standards. There could be some impact on endangered species. And this road salt and pollution that would run into the Holland River and into the Holland Marsh would also drain into Lake Simcoe.

And not to belabour the point here, but Lake Simcoe is like a very delicate body of water. It’s a smaller Lake. It can’t handle as much, and it’s already quite threatened. Various levels of government are spending a lot of money every year to make sure it doesn’t further decline.

Jordan That all sounds not great.

Emma No, it’s not ideal. And there are also a lot of other ways that the government could address congestion in the area that don’t necessarily involve building a new highway.

Jordan Why don’t we try to close this on a somewhat positive note, and you can explain what other options are out there if this government wants to go in a different direction?

Emma Sure. Well, I think one of the biggest ones is just using the infrastructure that we have already and optimizing it. In the case of the 413, I mentioned that the 407, the toll highway, runs pretty much parallel to it. Back in 2017, the former Liberal government found that they could actually accomplish very similar time savings if they just subsidized the 407 so that trucks could use it for free and avoid the toll. So that’s one thing. We already pretty much have a highway that’s running that route, why not use it? And the 407 is pretty empty. The other day there was a video of a small plane landing on it at midday. Can you imagine a small plane being able to land on any other GTA highway in the middle of the day? It’s unthinkable. The 407 is pretty under-utilized. So that’s one thing.

When it comes to the bypass, there are a lot of options. The Liberals commissioned a study in 2014 that looked at them. And if you think about our approach to COVID, it’s actually quite instructive for this. So with COVID, we know that layering responses is the best thing. It’s not just masks or just vaccines. It’s like a combination of many things right? Same deal with addressing traffic problems. If we improve our existing roads, so add some better interchanges or some specialized lanes for HOV in some spots. That will help a lot.

If we improve public transit, yes, that doesn’t help everything. Like if you’re trying to get the cottage country, a bus probably won’t help you, but that can clear up the road more generally, so the commuters don’t need to rely on it so much. And so by layering solutions like that, we can address it in other ways. And that study found that some of these solutions, even on their own, would provide a comparable benefit to the bypass with a lesser environmental impact. So there’s a lot that could be done. Highways aren’t the be all end all. And I think a lot of people are wondering why the government hasn’t considered those things as well.

Jordan I’m trying not to ask this as a loaded political question, but why haven’t they? It seems like it would be easier and faster to get results that way ahead of an election which the government concerned about being reelected might want to do.

Emma I think about this a lot. I don’t have an easy answer. I think in one sense, the developer angle is significant. Like with the Bradford bypass as well as the 413. We found that a lot of developers own land and stand to benefit, and appeasing big donors is one thing that I’m sure any ruling party would want to do the year before an election, but that doesn’t fully explain it for me either.

I think in a bigger sense, it goes back to this very 20th century vision of how to kickstart an economy. And it’s like big infrastructure projects, like a highway right? I mean, any infrastructure project creates jobs. It can be a green infrastructure project as well.

I think that it might also just be a case of Doug Ford trying to play a hit. As I mentioned, this line of attack worked really well for him when he was in City Council and at a time when his approval ratings are not at their peak, it seems like it could be a sound strategy. The PC say they have internal polling that shows that it is. And I think the only way we’ll really know is at election day, unfortunately. But that’s coming up soon, so we don’t have long to wait.

Jordan Always an exciting time in Ontario when a Ford is on the ballot.

Emma Never a dull moment.

Jordan Thanks for this, Emma.

Emma Thanks for having me.

Jordan Emma McIntosh of the Narwhal.

That was the Big Story. If you are curious and you’re just learning about Doug Ford’s brother’s political style, you might enjoy a podcast we made a couple of years ago called The Gravy Train, which is all about, well, that. You can find that wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also find the bigstory at thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. You can email us anytime, thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!] . And you can find this podcast and The Gravy Train, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan-Heath Rawlings, we’ll talk tomorrow.

Back to top of page