BradfordToday and InnisfilToday welcome letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following open letter to Ontario Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria was provided by Claire Malcolmson, executive director, Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition:
Dear Minister Sarkaria,
On October 21st, your ministry introduced Bill 212, which includes the Building Highways Faster Act. On October 28th you announced that you have awarded the contract to build the western portion of the highway between Highway 400 and Yonge Street. This, despite the absence of design or feasibility studies for building the eastern part of the Bradford Bypass, over the very sensitive Holland Marsh river valley. Until your government started piecemeal building this way, this process was illegal. This is against Environmental Assessment best practices to say the least.
Having followed the Bradford Bypass project in detail for three years, we believe that fast-tracking major infrastructure projects means removing more health, environmental, and property rights, and is not in the public interest. The province has yet to reasonably defend the need or justification for this project against any alternatives such as alternate routes or transit expansions. Unless your government substantially answers these questions, we are of the opinion that your government is set on this route in order to please sprawl developers.
Further, this action is a slap in the face to First Nations rights as we understand that consultations about the Lower Landing and their buried ancestors are ongoing.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has neither reviewed nor approved designs or mitigation plans, which they initially wanted to see before granting a permit to destroy fish habitat, as has been done by the Yonge early works bridge.
The Ontario government has not sought federal permissions for endangered species which will be impacted by this highway and appears to have little regard for its own provincial species at risk. Neither has it obtained permission to destroy habitats of migratory birds.
Please tell us how you can possibly avoid the habitats you are legally responsible for protecting with 24 hour construction?
Today, we are presenting you with a petition signed by nearly 1,800 people, requesting that the Ministry of Transportation Ontario:
1. Publicly release the traffic studies, clearly indicating the points of origin and time savings to justify this project;
2. Do a value for money audit of this project comparing it to regional road and public transit alternatives;
3. If traffic studies and the evaluation of alternatives justify it, pay for regional road improvements;
4. Plan for sustainable transportation. Prioritize getting Lake Simcoe watershed area GO stations built: Innisfil Orbit, Barrie Waterfront; and all day, two way electrification of the GO line;
5. Complete studies that are not being done — impacts to Lake Simcoe, cumulative climate impacts, cumulative health assessments and cumulative water impacts;
6. Use a salt alternative on the Bradford Bypass, Highway 404, and other provincial highways that negatively affect freshwater.
Please read the above petition carefully. It is very reasonable. Would you please respond by explaining what you are doing on each of these points, and/or why you are not doing these things? The people of Ontario deserve to know.
We would also like to remind you that more than 11,000 people signed a previous petition to stop the Bradford Bypass, and that 63 organizations and eight Lake Simcoe municipalities supported our call for a federal impact assessment for the project.
Also of note is the December 8, 2022 letter to Premier Ford from the Professional Engineers of Ontario, which strongly objected to this highway: “OSPE strongly urges the Ontario government to abide by the recommendations of your engineering subject matter experts and defer the highway projects, specifically Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, and reinvest that money into higher priority projects.”
Further, the Professional Engineers Government of Ontario union has initiated job action relating to both the Bradford Bypass and Highway 413. They seem not to want to help you fast-track this ill-conceived highway and the 413. Have you stopped to ask why? We suggest it is in part because your government has not addressed their substantial concerns, found here: “Infrastructure projects should not be politicized.”
Finally, I would invite you to read the attached letter written by Bill Foster, who has tracked the Bradford Bypass project for decades, as he articulates some alternatives to your chosen route, and as he presents the case for a value-for-money audit for the Bypass.
We await your response to the numbered points above.
Claire Malcolmson
Executive Director, Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition
