Ontario to speed up environmental assessments, property acquisitions for Highway 413

Ontario plans to speed up the building of highways by facilitating construction 24 hours a day, accelerating property acquisitions, and creating a faster environmental assessment process.

Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria announced Thursday that the proposed changes would be part of the first bill tabled by the government when the legislature returns Monday from its summer break.

“These common sense changes will help us build these projects significantly faster, saving drivers and families up to five hours every week,” he said.

The measures will be part of the same bill that will also include forcing municipalities to ask the province for permission to install bike lanes, if they will remove a lane for vehicle traffic, which the government is also positioning as a way to ease gridlock for drivers.

“Every year, gridlock costs Ontario’s economy $11 billion in lost productivity,” Sarkaria said Thursday. “This is money that could be invested in roads, hospitals and schools.”

The new bill would designating Highway 413, the Bradford Bypass and the Garden City Skyway bridge as priority projects to speed up their construction.

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It would also facilitate construction 24 hours a day, streamline utility relocations, introduce new penalties for obstructing access for field investigations or damaging equipment, and accelerate access to property and property acquisitions, though the minister did not provide details of how the bill would accomplish that.

2:09 Ford says highway 413 construction ‘will pump $350 million into the economy’

Sarkaria said the government is also proposing to accelerate the environmental assessment process for Highway 413.

“We take the environmental protections, the Environmental Assessment Act very seriously,” he said.

“This has been a project that has been studied and been on the books for 20-plus years. Ontario has some of the strictest environmental protections as we move through our general processes, but ultimately, we also know that we need to build for the future.”

Green Party deputy leader Aislinn Clancy said the proposed measures are not the solution to gridlock.

“Slashing environmental laws, paving over our Greenbelt — Ontarians have made it clear that they’re not OK with this,” she wrote in a statement.

“For the government to be trying it yet again with Highway 413 shows how they’ll do anything to help their inner circle over the people of this province. This expensive highway needs to be cancelled once and for all.”