Long before Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced plans to burrow a tunnel under Highway 401, a Canadian construction firm with a history of successful public infrastructure projects submitted a proposal to the Ontario government to build a tunnel of similar size and scope.
Global News has learned that in 2019, Canadian construction firm Aecon Group submitted an unsolicited proposal to the Ministry of Infrastructure pitching an idea to help relieve traffic on the heavily congested highway: an express tunnel under the 401 stretching from Highway 427 to Highway 404, with a possible connection to Pearson International airport.
Multiple sources said the idea caught the imagination of Premier Ford and was batted around behind the scenes inside his government for years. It only became a reality in late 2024, as the premier worked to frame the context for a possible early election.
In September, Ford announced his government would conduct a feasibility study on a 50-kilometre underground expressway from Brampton to Scarborough to determine the length, number of lanes and whether the tunnel could also host a transit line.
“We’re experts at tunnelling,” Ford said. “And once a feasibility study comes back, then we’ll move it forward.”
Days after announcing the plan, Ford said he had spoken to “one of the largest construction companies” along with private construction unions about the potential options to target traffic on the 401.
“They both came back separately with the same answer… they told me it’s probably equal or less expensive to tunnel underground,” Ford said on Oct 2.
In a statement sent to Global News, Aecon said the company has a long history of “sharing emerging technologies and innovative new approaches with decision makers.”
“Aecon is proud to have built game-changing energy and transportation projects for Ontarians,” the company said in a statement. “Building tunnels in support of transit and roadways to help relieve congestion is one solution that makes sense.”
A tunnel under the lake
Well before the Ford government picked up on the idea of a tunnel under the 401, Aecon had pushed similar congestion-relieving construction projects in other parts of Toronto.
Back in 2015, when Toronto City Council was grappling with whether to tear down or rehabilitate the Gardiner Expressway, Aecon approached the city with an alternate solution: to build a tunnel under the 18-kilometre expressway.
The idea, sources told Global News, was pitched by then-CEO John Beck who suggested the tunnel could run under the Gardiner Expressway from Highway 427 to the Don Valley Parkway, with a portion running under Lake Ontario.
Between 2015 and 2017, Beck was registered with the City of Toronto as an Aecon lobbyist with a goal of having a “discussion of future options for the Gardiner Expressway.”
Beck’s lobbying activity involved various directors and managers in transportation planning and infrastructure and also targeted the office of then-mayor John Tory, along with his staff.
The proposal, sources said, was pitched as a solution if the city was to tear down large sections of the eastern portion of the expressway.
An estimate of cost wasn’t attached.
A provincial pitch
To cover its bases, Aecon then went to the provincial government, which had significantly more financial firepower and oversees the rest of Ontario’s highways, to pitch the same idea.
Sources said Beck, who was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2024, presented the same idea to the Ministry of Transportation, suggesting Aecon was looking for provincial support for the Toronto Gardiner tunnel.
The proposal, sources said, never made it past the one meeting.
By the end of 2015, as the city voted to rehabilitate the aging Gardiner, Aecon’s proposal fell off the radar.
Ford government takes an interest
Then in 2019, congestion and large-scale infrastructure projects became a priority file for the Ford government, with two Toronto-area highway plans brought back from the dead.
In June of that year, the Ford government resumed the environmental assessment for Highway 413 in Peel and York Region. And, a couple of months later, work began again on the Bradford Bypass, directly to the north of Toronto.
Around the same time, Aecon approached the Ford government with an updated version of its tunnelling proposal.
The company filed an unsolicited proposal to Infrastructure Ontario offering a potential tunnel as the cure to highway congestion at a cost, sources said, of roughly $50 to $60 billion to build.
The unsolicited proposal process allows anyone with “innovative ideas” to submit their proposals to the Ontario government, with the caveat that the province “has sole and absolute discretion regarding whether or not to proceed with a submitted proposal, and may do so in a number of ways (for example, competitive tender).”
The expressway tunnel proposal would have taken drivers under the most congested portions of Highway 401 — from the 427 to the 404 — with periodic on and off-ramps and a potential connection to Toronto Pearson International Airport.
Multiple sources who spoke to Global News about the tunnel plan praised how Aecon had conducted themselves, pitching the idea through the official channels and waiting to see if government would show interest.
They said any idea accepted from Aecon would not automatically have gone to the company but instead have been submitted to a standard public bidding process, a reality they said Aecon also understood.
From a pitch to a podium
Initially, while the idea tunnel appeared to animate Premier Ford, it was placed on the back burner as the government focused on building the Ontario Line and furthering other highway projects.
Ahead of the 2022 election, the Progressive Conservative Party doubled down on the two highway projects it had already announced, and ran much of the campaign promising to build Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass.
Then, roughly half a decade after the unsolicited proposal first landed with the government, Aecon’s initial idea appears to have been converted into official provincial policy.
“With every single 400-series highway including the 401, projected to be over capacity within the next 10 years, our government is leaving no stone unturned to tackle gridlock and get people moving,” the government said in a statement to Global News.
In August, about a month before Ford’s announcement, Aecon lobbyists once again registered with both Toronto and Ontario.
“Discussing transportation projects in the City of Toronto,” the group said of its reasons for lobbying city officials.
The registration with Ontario’s Lobbyist Registrar offered more detail about why the company wanted to speak with ministers of infrastructure, finance, transportation, and Premier Ford’s office.
“To discuss how best to structure current and future public-private partnership projects to ensure innovation is rewarded and maximum competitive bids are submitted,” the filing stated.
Aecon has a long history of successful tunnelling projects in Canada, including the Toronto-York Spadina subway extension, the Eglinton West and Eglinton East LRT tunnels, the REM tunnel in Montreal and water tunnels in British Columbia.