Caroline Mulroney says the federal environment minister ‘will do anything’ to stop Highway 413

Ontario’s transportation minister says Steven Guilbeault is trying to block construction of one of the Ford government’s high-profile projects.

Thestar.com
April 4, 2023
Robert Benzie

Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney is charging that federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault “will do anything to stop” Highway 413 from being built.

But Guilbeault’s office countered that Premier Doug Ford’s government needs to submit its environmental paperwork before the project can proceed.

Revving up the rhetoric between the province and Guilbeault, Mulroney called upon “Liberal MPs in Peel Region to stand up in their caucus and to stand up to their federal minister” to promote the highway.

“It’s clear that Minister Guilbeault will do anything to stop this project from getting built,” she said Monday of the proposed 60-kilometre Milton-Vaughan freeway linking Highways 401 and 400.

Every riding along the route is represented by a Tory MPP and a Liberal MP.

Mulroney’s comments come after Ford described the federal minister as “a real piece of work” on Thursday for his claim Ontario has no plan to fight climate change.

In an interview broadcast Sunday with Vassy Kapelos on CTV’s Question Period, Guilbeault shrugged off the barb and outlined his many differences with the provincial Progressive Conservatives.

“My role as environmental and climate change minister is to work to ensure that Canadians have access to cleaner air, cleaner water, healthy ecosystems, which leads to healthy Canadians -- and on that it seems that the premier of Ontario and myself have a difference of opinion as to what needs to be done,” he said.

“I didn’t say that Ontario wasn’t doing anything. I said that the Ontario government has no climate plan, which is true and they’ve admitted as much themselves,” the minister told Kapelos.

“A plan to me is you list a series of measures whether they’re regulatory, legislative (or) investment, you have targets, you have annual reports, you track your progress -- what’s going well, what’s not, which is exactly what we’re doing federally,” he said.

“Ontario has none of that. They have a strategy ... but it’s not a climate plan,” said Guilbeault, who also criticized Queen’s Park for not addressing Indigenous concerns over the Ring of Fire mining development in northern Ontario.

But on Highway 413, Mulroney said Ottawa “moved the goalposts” by saying the project requires a federal environmental impact assessment -- even though in March 2020 it said the freeway did not need one.

“That’s why last week my ministry sent a letter to the federal government expressing that this is unacceptable, especially for a project that is so critical to our province,” she said.

“We’ve actually been working collaboratively with the federal government for many years on their questions with respect to the impact on the environment and on species at risk.”

In a statement Monday, Guilbeault’s aide Oliver Anderson said the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada is still waiting for information from the province “in order to begin the ‘planning phase’ of the impact assessment process.”

“The project cannot advance as long as the province does not fulfil this step in the process,” said Anderson.

“To suggest that Minister Guilbeault has any predetermined view about a project that was designated before his time as minister and an assessment process that hasn’t even been launched yet, due to lack of information from the province, is totally inappropriate and unjust.”

NDP Leader Marit Stiles, for her part, said “there’s a lot of opposition still to the 413 and to the development and paving over of the Greenbelt.”

“So I’m happy to see the federal government step forward and actually get involved. I think it’s really important,” she said.