Heading backwards in Ontario

OTTAWA—Call him the Highwayman. Ontario Premier Doug Ford appears to have staked his party’s re-election on the perception that the province’s commuters want more, ever-bigger roads, regardless of the environmental consequences. It might have been a miscalculation, seeing that just overnight driving went from being a somewhat costly necessity to an outright luxury. But so far there’s no indication Ford has erred in putting drivers at the centre of his campaign strategy, and the Progressive Conservatives would seem to have a very good shot at retaining their majority on June 2. This is a fortunate development for the populist Ontario premier, who seems to have recovered in the minds of the province’s voters after a rocky start in 2018 and a pandemic record with some very bad patches. But he appears to have correctly read the mood of a large chunk of the Ontario public of late. He has sought to appeal to those opposing all anti-COVID measures as well as the more run-of-the-mill crowd, which, out of impatience or ignorance, was flirting with the idea that they were being somehow oppressed. In that vein, Ford benefited from Canadians’ general lack of understanding of the governing relationship of the provinces to their respective cities, successfully ducking his responsibility for the lawless occupation in February of his province’s second largest municipality. Ford started his pro-car initiative early this year with the rebate of Ontario licence renewal fees, providing a handy pre-election cash bonus to 7.5 million vehicle owners. He has continued this approach with promises, if re-elected, to cut the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre and to pave over as much of the province as possible in areas of interest to crucial suburban voters. On the first day of the current campaign, Ford appeared along the route of his promised Highway 413 construction project—a campaign plank with the unusual characteristic of being a scandal in plain view. “People are tired of the gridlock traffic they see every day," Ford said. "It's time to start pouring the concrete. It's time to get paving.” The proposed 60-kilometre highway, which would cost an estimated $6- to $10-billion, would cut through huge areas of farmland and the environmentally protected Greenbelt around Toronto. And based on an earlier government-commissioned estimate, it would save commuters only 30 seconds (although the Ford government now says commuters going end to end would save 30 minutes). What’s more, some of the region’s most well-heeled land developers—some with connections to the Progressive Conservatives—would be in a position to make a killing if the road goes ahead, according to a Torstar/National Observer investigation. Cities along the route are having second thoughts about the highway, and the other three major Ontario parties oppose it. While this mega-project is at the centre of Ford’s build-build-build campaign theme, his party has also made several other highway construction pledges. Altogether, the Progressive Conservatives’ unvarnished appeal to vehicle owners poses a decisive question on June 2 of interest to all Canadians: whether voters will buy into a continuing 1950s-style vision of relentless urban sprawl and longer car-based commutes despite the irrefutable need to cut emissions in a climate emergency. If anything, Ford seems to have shown that, although people are worried about impending climate disasters, they’re not too fussy about accountability when it comes to what governments are actually doing. In 2018, Ford’s first policy decision ended the province’s $3-billion cap-and-trade program and he went on to fight a losing court battle over the federal carbon tax. He eliminated Ontario’s independent environmental watchdog, weakened protection for endangered species, and undercut electric vehicle sales by chopping a $14,000 buyer incentive. Although the Progressive Conservatives have committed to funding for better transit in Toronto and Hamilton and for electric car production, critics say the government’s priority is really economic development and mega-projects of the kind desired by Ontario’s richest developers. Overall, as the provincial auditor general revealed, there is no evidence the Ontario government is on track to meet the GHG emissions reductions targets it set in 2018. Still, the Ford government says great reductions in GHG emissions have been achieved in Ontario, failing to note this came mainly from the previous Liberal Ontario government’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity generation. “The Ford government is basically coasting on previous actions taken by Ontario governments and current actions being taken by the federal government,” Keith Stewart of Greenpeace Canada told the CBC last month. The Ontario NDP, the Greens, and the Liberals have all criticized Ford’s highway fixation and made promises to improve transit. The Ontario Liberals, trying to recover from a terrible 2018 campaign, have gone so far as to offer a dubious but catchy “buck-a-ride” transit program until 2024 if elected. Coming after a two-year pandemic and in the midst of an inflation crisis, Ontarians’ verdict on Ford’s approach to transportation and climate will be telling. Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times