GTA West highway is dying a slow death. Ford government should put it out of its misery

Thestar.com
March 8, 2021

The public doesn’t want it. Municipalities don’t want it. And an expert panel has called it a disastrous $6-billion expense that would save commuters a paltry 30 seconds or so of driving time.

The GTA West highway -- a planned 400-series route across York, Peel and Halton regions -- is already dying a slow death. The Ford government should put this project out of its misery.

The government made a huge mistake when it pulled Hwy. 413 from the dustbin, where it had been properly filed, announced a planned route and put it on the construction fast-track by exempting it from the normal environmental assessment process. And to its great shame, it used the COVID-19 pandemic as cover.

It’s time to own up to those mistakes and provide relief to the citizens who have rightly banded together against this destructive and unnecessary highway by announcing its immediate cancellation.

The proposed highway, set to run through the Greenbelt in Vaughan, across largely undeveloped land in Caledon and Brampton to Milton, has always been a terrible idea. That’s why the previous Liberal government put it on hold in 2015 and ultimately shelved it in 2018.

It would pave over thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land -- including the protected Greenbelt -- damage waterways and contribute to more urban sprawl.

The expert panel that reviewed the proposal determined the highway contravenes the province’s planning objectives, is bad for the environment and isn’t even an effective way to reduce traffic congestion. It’s misguided, destructive and pointless.

Yet the Ford government, apparently listening to its favourite stakeholders (developers), was content to ignore all those warnings. And it used the pandemic as cover to speed it up by skipping over parts of Ontario’s environmental assessment system that could identify concerns with the highway and potentially minimize damage.

It’s as though the government is so keen to build this $120-million-per-kilometre road that it doesn’t even want to know how bad it’s going to be.

Thankfully, others do and they’re speaking up.

Brampton and Caledon, at a minimum, want a federal environmental assessment that they can trust before anything happens. Vaughan, Mississauga and Halton Hills have gone further and pulled their support for project.

“The proposed GTA West highway will have a disastrous impact on the environment, encourage residential sprawl and increase our dependence on cars,” says Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie.

The government can drag this out. It can hide behind its “consultations” as a way to decide, as government House Leader Paul Calandra put it, “if it makes sense to build this piece of infrastructure.”

But why wait?

This road makes no sense. Except, of course, to the developers sitting on nearby land who have long wanted it built.

The highway would pave over farmland and destroy Greenbelt land, which the government claims it wants to expand. It will accelerate sprawl and make the government’s plan to address climate change even more fanciful.

There are better ways to address the region’s transportation needs -- and far better ways to spur the post-pandemic economy than building this highway.

There’s a reason that Ontario’s Liberal, NDP and Green parties all vehemently oppose this project. Environmentalists and politicians in 905 communities -- two groups that don’t often see eye to eye -- are also opposed. Farmers and local residents, too.

So who but developers could the province have in mind in continuing to pursue this?

The government revived a project that should never have been given a second chance. This is now an opportunity for the Ford government to show it can put the interests of the people ahead of the developers. What a welcome change that would be.