December 7th, 2021

MPP Bourgouin reintroduces bill for safer winter highways in Northern Ontario

QUEEN’S PARK – NDP MPP Guy Bourgouin held an online press conference on Tuesday to reintroduce his private member’s bill to improve maintenance standards and make winter driving safer on Northern Ontario’s main Highways 11 and 17. Bourgouin’s bill would make it the law that the province must clear the roads within eight hours of a snowfall.

“Northerners have been waiting long enough. Doug Ford should have acted on my bill two years ago to clear our highways during the winter and make it safer for northern families. Ford’s refusal to act means northern drivers keep risking their lives on poorly maintained routes in the winter,” said Bourgouin, MPP for Mushkegowuk-James Bay.

“With this bill we can prevent highway tragedies in Northern Ontario by making our highways safer. Northern drivers and their families deserve nothing less than to know that their roads are safe during our long winter months.”

Bourgouin was joined by representatives from northern communities and businesses who are calling for safer, cleaner highways to reduce winter closures.

Bourgouin’s bill will improve winter maintenance on Highways 11 and 17 by ensuring that snow is removed within eight hours at the end of a snowfall. To achieve this, the NDP bill would classify northern highways the same as all 400 series highways that have the strictest snow removal requirements.

The Ministry of Transportation’s snow removal classification standards depend on the type of highway and traffic volumes, not on climate or vehicle size and weight. Bourgouin’s bill would bump up highways 11 and 17 to Class 1 in all of their sections, whether two or four-lane, and eliminate vehicular traffic specification.

Quotes:

Mark Andrews, former OPP North East Region Traffic and Marine Unit Commander
"Highways 11 and 17 are the Trans-Canada Highway link across Ontario and the rest of Canada. The environmental disasters in British Columbia have illustrated the fragility of our transportation corridors across this country. Ontario needs to take notice and do everything now to prevent the Trans Canada link from being severed for any duration. I have stood on Highways 17 and 11 dealing with crashes due to weather events, I have closed those highways due to weather events. Upon the closure the question of ‘How long will the closures be?’ were non-stop. The impact to our province and country, in human lives and the economy is too high to continue to treat these highways as simple secondary two lane systems. The government needs to act now to ensure success in the future, to prevent injury, death, and keep transportation corridors open.”

Mario Villeneuve, Vice-President of Villeneuve Construction, 2nd Vice-President of Ontario Road Builders Association
“Northern highways are no longer safe and road closures occur more often than before. Commercial traffic has drastically increased on the Highway 11 corridor and our road infrastructure and maintenance need to be adapted to better serve all northern communities and businesses.”