Ontario Liberals would kill Hwy. 413 ‘once and for all,’ Steven Del Duca says

Thestar.com
March 23, 2021
Robert Benzie

Ontario’s Liberals -- who proposed and then scrapped Hwy. 413 before the Progressive Conservatives revived the controversial GTA freeway -- are promising to “kill it once and for all” if elected next year.

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said Monday he would cancel “this sprawl-spreading highway” and use the $8 billion in savings to build and renovate schools across the province.

“Let me be clear, the 413 will not make your life better. Doug Ford wants to build it to make his billionaire friends happy,” he told reporters.

Del Duca was a transportation minister in the government of former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne, who kiboshed the Vaughan-Brampton-Caledon-Milton highway in 2018, years after her Grit predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, first proposed it.

“Ontario Liberals stopped this reckless project once before and we will do it again,” he said, insisting the only people who want it built are wealthy developers who bankroll the Tories.

“It is inconceivable to me that Doug Ford wants to spend billions paving over farmland, destroying wetlands and undermining the Greenbelt all for a highway that will only save some commuters mere seconds.”

Ford’s Conservatives revived the GTA West Transportation Corridor, as Hwy. 413 is formally known, even as they are promising to expand the 800,000-hectare Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto Area.

But local councils in municipalities that would be affected by the highway have been voting against it, including in Vaughan and Mississauga.

Mindful of growing opposition to its construction and aware that a federal environmental assessment could derail it as early as May, the Tories appear to be inching away from it.

Solicitor-General Sylvia Jones, whose riding of Dufferin-Caledon would be impacted by the new thoroughfare, would only commit to a provincial environmental assessment -- not to the highway actually being built.

“For many people it’s the frustration of a (previous) Liberal government that stopped an environmental assessment (three years ago), but didn’t actually release any land,” Jones told reporters Monday at Queen’s Park.

“So completing the (environmental assessment) to me is good governance and makes sense,” she said, pointedly refusing to endorse the highway.

“I think we’re jumping to conclusions to suggest that we know what that environmental assessment will be.”

Similarly, Education Minister Stephen Lecce, whose King-Vaughan riding includes the proposed route, would only say “a rigorous environmental assessment must be completed.”

But Lecce added it was “a bit preposterous” that Del Duca was promising to earmark billions for school repairs and construction.

“The (previous) Liberal government created an accumulated maintenance backlog, which in English means $15 billion of repairs that should have happened under his watch,” the minister said.

“So it is perhaps a tad rich for the Ontario Liberal leader to submit that their priority is schools when they closed 600 of them. There’s no government in the history of Ontario that had more school closures.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who has long opposed Hwy. 413, said she’s “certainly hopeful that the government will do the right thing here.”

“It just seems to me unbelievable that the government would go ahead with a highway that really has very little value in terms of saving people time on the road,” said Horwath.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner, who also opposes the highway, noted that no government should “waste $6 billion to $10 billion on a highway that will save people 30 seconds” of commuting time.

“All the local municipalities and federations of agriculture are coming out against (this). It makes no sense to proceed with it,” said Schreiner.

“Kill it and get it over with and spend that money on some higher priorities.”