For several years, there has been a red-light camera at Denlow Blvd., a street in my neighbourhood, and Leslie Street, a major thoroughfare. I’ve never run a red light there. A few years later, a speed camera was installed at Denlow Public School, near the intersection of Denlow and Leslie. It once caught me doing 51 km. in a 40 km. zone on a Saturday, and I was fined $150. These two automated enforcement mechanisms have changed my behaviour as a driver in urban neighbourhoods. I’ve slowed down and I’ve gotten used to 40 km. as a maximum speed. I’m a safer driver, and that’s a good thing.

The War for the Car

Therefore, I was appalled when Doug Ford criticized speed cameras as a cash grab on the part of municipal governments and promised that he would use the power of the provincial government to over-ride municipal government ordinances and policies to remove speed cameras. The impact of this pronouncement was exacerbated because the morning Ford made his pronouncement, the Toronto Police Service revealed that 16 speed cameras had been cut down the night before. Giving Ford the benefit of the doubt that he was unaware of these acts of vandalism, nonetheless his pronouncement is an encouragement to other vandals to finish the job.

Borrowing from his late brother’s playbook, Doug Ford has carried on a hugely expensive culture war on behalf of cars and drivers. His political logic has been to appeal to suburban voters and offend urban voters.

By removing vehicle registration fees, reducing the gasoline tax, and removing highway tolls, the Province of Ontario has foregone billions of dollars that could have been used to fund health and education. The province is also spending billions on new highways such as Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass.

The latest battles in Ford’s culture war have gone much farther than the initial ones. The proposal to build a 60 km. long tunnel under Highway 401 would cost $100 billion, which would greatly increase Ontario’s ask from capital markets, possibly leading to a downgrade of Ontario’s credit rating. This project will not be included in the Carney Government’s short list of major infrastructure projects.

The Ford Government’s proposal to remove bike lanes – now before the Ontario Court of Appeal – and the newly-pronounced intention to remove municipal speed cameras both put the Ford Government in opposition to public safety. Removing bike lanes would increase deaths of cyclists, which is the issue at stake in the litigation. Removing speed cameras would increase speeds in urban neighbourhoods, putting pedestrians’, especially schoolchildren’s, lives at risk.

The Ford Government has produced no policy analysis to support the 401 tunnel, the removal of bike lanes, or the removal of speed cameras. They do not have a transportation policy; instead, they are using the transportation sector to fight an enormously expensive culture war.

Too Much of a Bad Thing

So the question to be asked is just how far Doug Ford wants to go in his war on behalf of the car. Does he want to spend billions of dollars on a fantasy tunnel? Does he want to put the lives of pedestrians and schoolchildren at risk? The Opposition should be vigorously asking these questions in the media now and on the floor of the Legislature when it resumes sitting on October 20.

Postscript

Beth and I have both finished reading and marking up the page proofs for Public Representations, and she is entered our changes on a PDF we will shortly be sending back to the publisher. Spanish has a word for it: Adelante!