By Doug Draper
The people of Niagara “deserve” to see plans for cutting a new super highway through the region resurrected with a full environmental review, says Tim Hudak.
Ontario Conservative Leader and Niagara MPP Tim Hudak
The Ontario Conservative leader and Niagara MPP was responding in a media release this Aug. 3 to a recent report from Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government that places the idea of building a new highway, from the Hamilton-Burlington area through to the Fort Erie-Buffalo border area, on the backburners indefinitely.
“I have been calling on Dalton McGuinty to get moving on this important transportation infrastructure for years,” said Hudak, who has been a strong advocate for a new highway through Niagara going back to his years in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a cabinet minister in the former Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.
“This is the latest example of how Dalton McGuinty is taking Hamilton and Niagara families and businesses for granted.”
In the media release, Hudak went on to argue that a new 400 series highway, that would be built south of the Niagara Escarpment and would likely cut through municipalities like West Lincoln, parts of Pelham and Welland and Fort Erie before possibly connecting with the last leg of the QEW and Peace Bridge boarder crossing, is needed “to address population growth, a growing economy and traffic safety concerns.”
“A mid-peninsula corridor would provide an artery for trade, tourism, investment and safer travel,” concluded Hudak’s media release. “Local families (in Niagara) deserve to see this project move forward with a full environmental assessment.”
The McGuinty government’s decision to shelve the highway idea indefinitely follows recent years of studies and consulting with members of the public as part of a full environmental assessment review the government applied to the highway idea when it came to power seven years ago.
The studies and consultations led the province’s Ministry of Transportation to the conclusion that future transportation needs of the region may be better served through improvements to existing roads and highways, and through developing a system of alternatives to ever more cars and trucks, including Go buses and trains and other passenger and commercial rail services.
At meetings the ministry has held with the public, many people expressed concern about the impact a new highway would have on agricultural lands and the environment.
Many also questioned the wisdom of investing anywhere up to $2 billion (or possibly even more) on a new highway when so much talk around the world is moving to greener transportation alternatives in the 21st century.
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And what if the “full environmental assessment” showed that this project would be disastrous – fostering sprawl, destroying farmlands, ruining habitat, ruining wetlands, etc? I highly doubt whether this would have an effect on Tim Hudak and other Harrisites. Spending $2 billion on a new superhighway, when we are already decades behind most jurisdictions in the developed world on urban and inter-urban transit, are suffering from smog and climate change, are losing agricultural land at an alarming rate, etc, is the epitome of backward thinking. Of course, we’d expect no less from the Tories – who are ok on spending money on destructive things (like tax breaks for the wealthy, highways, etc), but are tightwads when it comes to spending that actually helps ordinary people (clean water and air, social programs, education, etc). Dalton has been a let-down in many ways, but lord help us if Hudak and his band of neo-con clowns get back into office.
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The attitude of the new Conservative leader, is typical of the response of his party to environmental issues since the election of Mike Harris as leader. Although previously, the party had a proud record, enacting for instance the Niagara Escarpment Plan in 1985 during the brief lived government of Frank Miller, it has since the 1990s simply taken a negative position on environmental reforms, promsing to reverse green initatives of other governments In taking this position Hudak is simply the errand boy of the various business lobbies that have been pushing this monstrous road in Niagara since the 1990s, which Harris caved into while Premier.
Stopping the mid-pen through Niagara was a major environmental victory. It is likely the first time any of the major media outlets have reported on this was when they decided to get behind Hudack in his attack on this victory. This illustrates the terrible collusion of the media, business and political elites in Niagara behind schmes that if approved, would do serious damage to the environment One of the factors in the decision to shelve the expressway was the new wetland mapping of the Ministry of Natural Resources, which reveals if constructed the scheme would slice up wetland forests across Niagara.
It would be great if the money saved by not building the monstrous road were put into a $2 billion fund to promote transit and other environmentallly friendly measures for transportation in Niagara. Then the government’s action could not be attacked on the regionally based means that Hudack is attempting to employ.
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Highway #3 is little used by heavy trucks and business is down, putting this project on the back burner is the thing to do, why not if they have so much money to throw around use Big Becky and drive a rail tunnel under the canal dedicated to fast rail trains and the GO system people in Toronto would love to come to Niagara without driving, when I lived in Europe everybody used rail, cheap and fast and no auto tie ups,and relaxing, a lot cheaper than 2 billion dollars. the cost of another Highway.
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Jardine’s comments are excellent. It seems that the cost of tunelling under the canal for GO tranist could be afforded if the mid-pen project was firmly cancelled.
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I am very grateful the Provincial government has shelved the mid-peninsula highway. I agree with the position others so far have taken here in response. Other people, with whom I generally agree on many matters, are in favour of this project. With great respect, are wrong on this issue.
Below is a quick reduction of an article I wrote several years ago on this.
A new highway is a wrong because economic and environmental realities are bearing down on us that will dramatically change our lives. Climate change and oil depletion are missing elements from the various reports in favour, like the Wilbur Smith Associates report commissioned by the Niagara Region and others.
Highways assuming carbon-based transportation are a major part of the problem of global warming. More highways will not be part of the solution nor will marginally greener cars. There must be a reduction in highway transportation, and it may happen sooner and not later, and it will not be a matter of choice.
We already have a public infrastructure with roads, bridges, sewers, water supply and treatment, health systems, military equipment, energy systems, and assorted government buildings that we are now having serious difficulty maintaining, much less replacing. If there is to be a necessary economic realignment away from the oil economy then choosing a new highway over better alternatives is simply wrong. Paying the mortgage for a wrong and eventually underused infrastructure will be hard to take.
As attractive as the new highway may sound, “job creation, less QEW traffic, etc,” the results would be disappointing. Job creation needs to be the result of creating local conditions for an environmentally sustainable future and not attempted with the cornucopian assumptions of the economy of oil.
Jobs outsourced to cheap labour in Asia will come back. Much higher transportation costs will ensure that. Local manufacturing and local food production, with a focus on the local market, will become much more important. The choice between a new highway and the farmland it will destroy should be easy. Since it will no longer be affordable to ship in food from China or Chile, or California, we will need that land.
Measures we take to slow global warming are the same measures that will delay the arrival of “peak oil” and give us time to adapt. Now is the time to invest in a transportation infrastructure that will be foundational to a new economy. Directing commercial and commuter traffic to other systems, such as a modernized freight rail system (connecting to canal shipping?) and light rapid transit, is a much smarter choice. Rail can more easily meet the objectives of economic sustainability as qualified by the needs of the environment and reality of energy supplies.
Sure, developing an alternative transportation system is complex and extremely difficult. We have long supported “single unit” modes of moving goods and people and we are well set up for adding to that approach. It just is not going to continue to be affordable. The market will provide the motivation. Governments at all levels will need to provide guidance through incentives and targeted investments in infrastructure.
So is this something Niagara can do by itself? Obviously it is not. We can contribute, by example, to the discussion to move in other directions. We can begin to develop or return to our own home grown light rail transportation system (if we are prepared to think ahead – which we are having a hard time doing now.)
Whenever I travel down the revamped 406 I see the old light rail line that used to serve from Pt. Dalhousie, to St. Catharines, Thorold, Fonthill, Welland, and Pt. Colborne. One can predict the short sightedness of lowering the overpass where the tracks were once active, so that now only bicycles can pass. Some day we will want that rail line and its right of way back and the height necessary will have to be reinstated.
Those who argue for the highway should first be able to console us that none of the predicted environmental or energy supply conditions will arrive. They must reasonably prove that we shall continue indefinitely to be able to grow the economy in our present manner with oil as its foundation, or they must demonstrate, if oil is not central, the certainty of salvation through new technology.
Of course, in the face of compelling evidence pointing to a different future, they can’t ask us to be believers without asking for a leap of faith. Hope is a strategy for personal salvation, but not very wise as a government strategy – again thanks to the Liberal government. If the proponents cannot guarantee the cup of oil shall always run over, then serious alternatives, which imply a very different transportation lifestyle for individuals and businesses, must be put forth and promoted as if our life depended on it.
Dick Halverson
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Gee, I kinda miss all the complaining!
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