A Northern plan for safer highways

Enforcement, open scales, road maintenance, use of rail

by John Vanthof, MPP Temiskaming-Cochrane

Road safety has many factors, but there are issues that add disproportionately to dangerous conditions. When I was first elected, it was mainly winter maintenance. The Liberal government at the time also said that everything was fine on the highways. When my office created the Northern Road Report, to show it wasn’t, the Minister of Transportation demanded that we take it down and they threatened further action if we didn’t. The Northern Road report helped prove that even when contract requirements were being met, people were at risk because of a lack of maintenance on parts of the highway system. The Government was forced to make changes, and I think we are at that point again.

Currently some poorly trained commercial vehicle drivers and the companies they work for are putting all other drivers at undue risk. Incidents have been easy to track on social media. Investigative reports on the problems in the commercial truck training and licensing, and from the Auditor General of Ontario identified this problem as far back as 2018. My NDP colleagues and I have brought this issue up many times in the legislature. The response from the Ford government has been that these are safest roads in North America, and that they are looking into the matter.

Regardless of political stance, I hope that we can all agree that one of the basic jobs of any government is to ensure that people who are issued a driver’s license are capable of safely driving the vehicle for which they are licensed. There are over a hundred companies in Ontario who recruit, train and license their own drivers and they can issue Ontario licenses to them. These are among the worst offenders. Of course there are still good driving schools, and companies that provide excellent training programs to their new drivers, but not all of them. Change needs to happen in the immediate and long term.

Short Term

• Have all new drivers tested through the MTO, not their employers or third-party private companies. If their student drivers can’t pass a legitimate road test, then these driving schools will be forced to change how they conduct business.

Mid Term

• Have the MTO take over management of maintenance operations in the province by working with the contractors and providers throughout the north.
• More emphasis needs to be put on to using rail to move goods so that not so many loads need to travel on the highway.
• Snow tires could be made mandatory for all passenger vehicles.
• More MTO enforcement officers need to be on the road to enforce the rules and the scales need to be open daily.
• Promised highway upgrades need to be expedited so that we aren’t waiting years for rest areas and items like the 2 + 1 pilot project to be installed and make impacts. 

Long Term

• Finally, Highways 11 and 17 need to be updated to divided four-lane where it is possible.  This is something that would take years and successive governments to achieve. The TransCanada Highway is the road system that is supposed to move goods and people across the country, but it is no longer equipped to do that safely here in northern Ontario.
• I invite comments and suggestions so that we can develop a plan to force the government to act, for all our families.