Anushka Yadav, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer

Ahead of the 2022 Ontario election, opposition party leaders keyed in on one of Doug Ford’s main re-election planks. 

“Doug Ford’s developer buddies are the ones that are going to gain the most from the 413,” Andrea Horwath, the NDP leader at the time, said. 

“Doug Ford is not interested in building this highway, the 413, because he wants to resolve congestion, he wants to reward his friends,” former Ontario Liberal leader, Steven Del Duca, said.

Three years later, two of the opposition party leaders have changed but the message is the same; all three have vowed to cancel the 413 if elected, while the unpopular highway agenda remains near the top of Ford’s campaign talking points.

“I will die by the time these highways or trains will be built,” Scarborough resident Rajesh Kumar, who often travels to Brampton for work, tells The Pointer.

Kumar had never even heard of the 413—despite Ford’s frequent references to building highways that will fix the very congestion they are largely responsible for.

The 413 was first floated by the PCs in 2002, after the ministry of transportation under the premiership of Mike Harris proposed the corridor when powerful developers sought to boost the value of their land across north Brampton and southern Caledon.

From the beginning, it was seen as little more than a development play to benefit builders, with few actual transportation benefits. 

Over the next two decades the plan languished as Liberal governments lacked interest in a project that was pushed by developer-friendly mayors in Brampton and Caledon. 

That all changed when Doug Ford became premier in 2018 and placed the project back at the top of his highway-oriented transportation strategy.

The project, still viewed by many as a scheme driven by developers, has never found its way into the imagination of Ontarians.

Recently immigrated Brampton resident Reza N., who has been in the province less than a year, also knew little about the ambitious plan to cut a major 400-series corridor from Milton to Vaughan, arcing through farm fields, sensitive ecosystems and the supposedly protected Ontario Greenbelt. But the newcomer did learn quickly how expensive life in the province is, making the notion of a multi-billion highway connecting two points travelled seldomly by commuters, a head scratcher. 

Welcome to Doug Ford’s Ontario.

The price of the project has been estimated at as much as $12 billion, but it’s hard to predict when labour and material costs rise so rapidly. Spending to promote the Highway 413, meanwhile, remains unclear; a 2024 Ontario Auditor General’s report revealed the Ford government allocated at least $103.5 million for advertising between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, with some data unavailable, such as the cost of physical signage at construction sites like the large blue billboards along Highways 400, 401, 404, and 10 promoting the Highway 413 and Bradford Bypass projects.

“Because the signage is exempted from our review, we do not know the cost,” Auditor General of Ontario Shelley Spence mentioned in the report. The PCs, instead of being transparent, have failed to voluntarily release the figures to the taxpayers covering the expense.

Despite PC advertisements and campaign-style claims about getting “shovels in the ground” to ease congestion and give families more time together, there is very little known about the benefits and impacts of the approved project. Detailed research commissioned by the previous Liberal government, showing an average time saving of 30 seconds for those who might use the 413, were almost immediately wiped off the provincial government website after Ford and the PCs were elected in 2018.

Ford has failed to explain how many current commuters would use a highway that starts in Milton, west of Mississauga along the 401, curving north through the western side of Brampton before arcing east right below and through the Greenbelt and then connecting with the 400 at the north edge of Vaughan.

When construction on what would become Highway 401 began in 1946, few could have imagined the scale it would reach. Initially designed as a four-lane express route bypassing Toronto, the highway was meant to provide a high-speed alternative to the congested and traffic-light-laden Highway 2. Built in sections, the first stretch opened in 1947 between Highland Creek and Oshawa, but post-war material shortages and the Korean War delayed further expansion. By 1956, the Toronto Bypass—spanning from Islington to Markham Road—was completed with two lanes in each direction. However, it became clear almost immediately that the road was too narrow to handle the rapidly increasing volume of vehicles. 

Expansion efforts began almost as soon as the first segments opened. The highway quickly grew from four lanes to six, and then to 12 lanes in some sections to accommodate rising demand. The province introduced an express-collector system through Toronto, a design that separated local and long-distance traffic to improve flow. In 1968, the entire length of Highway 401—from Windsor in the west to the Quebec border in the east—was officially completed, but further widening projects continued for decades.  

Despite continuous expansion, congestion remained a problem. By the 1970s, the highway was already considered one of the busiest in the world, and subsequent decades only saw traffic volumes increase.

This is what experts call induced demand—the paradox where adding more road capacity attracts more vehicles, ultimately making traffic even worse.

Today, Highway 401 has sections that exceed 18 lanes through Toronto, making it one of the widest and most heavily traveled highways globally. In 2019, certain stretches saw as many as 450,000 vehicles per day, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO). 

Did it solve what it intended to solve?

A 2023 Environmental Defence report highlighted that Highway 401 remains “notoriously congested,” with bottlenecks at key junctions during commuter traffic being the primary cause of gridlock.

It also affected the Greenbelt, disrupting local wetlands and surrounding agricultural ecosystems—impacts that Highway 413 will amplify on a much larger scale.

“In an attempt to tackle the issue of urban congestion, over $8 billion has been invested across Ontario into almost 3,000 infrastructure projects. Having not yet effectively alleviated the issues with congestion, the province of Ontario plans to continue to invest in highway infrastructure. Such investments may include the potential funding of the proposed Highway 413,” the report stated.

The PCs have been repeatedly shown that Highway 413 won’t solve congestion.

In 2024, Ontario finance minister Peter Bethlenfalvy argued in a speech that if the roads, referring to Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, aren’t built, “in 10 years, we will be at gridlock on all 400-series highways.”

Documents obtained by The Trillium through the Freedom of Information Act suggest that Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass will likely make things worse.

According to internal Ministry of Transportation projections, even with the expansion of Highway 413—whether it has four, six, or eight lanes—commute speeds will still be abysmally slow in 2041, especially during peak times. These projections reveal that traffic congestion will persist, with travel speeds between 20 and 40-kilometres an hour being common.

Though the government is pitching Highway 413 as a four-to-six-lane highway, documents show it could grow to 10 lanes by 2041, similar to the 401.

Over the past five years, the Ford government has demonstrated a pattern of making decisions that lack data-based evidence to support them. Environmental considerations have been ignored.

A key part of this approach has been bypassing environmental assessments, opting instead to use vague environmental evaluations for both housing and transportation projects that do not incorporate existing standards or traditional technical evaluation methods.

To expedite Highway 413, the Ford government introduced Bill 212, the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, which includes provisions for the Highway 413 Act. The legislation fast-tracks the highway’s construction by exempting it from the provincial Environmental Assessment Act and streamlining the approval process for the 59-kilometre highway and its extensions along Highways 410 and 427.

Critics argue this steamroller approach could allow the project to bypass essential scrutiny and approval procedures, potentially compromising environmental and community concerns.

“As noted by other regulatory agencies, it remains unclear how natural heritage features including Fish and Migratory Bird habitat would be identified and protected before early works commence under the proposed exemption,” a letter by Environmental Defence to the federal government mentions.

The Act also grants the province the authority to withhold crucial information about the project, while also permitting 24-hour construction on the highways. Such a move could significantly disrupt migrating birds and nocturnal species and make it more challenging for landowners along the route to oppose the project.

“We need to base our policy and political decisions on clear information, and that information needs to be shared transparently with citizens,” University of Toronto’s Senior Lecturer Emeritus at the School of Environment, Beth Savan, told The Pointer.

Transparency with Ontario residents has not been a feature of Ford’s government. During the current election campaign, after he made a snap decision to send voters to the ballot early, few PC candidates are doing media interviews and most are skipping debates and community events, leaving many wondering how they are supposed to find out about projects such as the 413 Highway, the Bradford Bypass, the Toronto plan for the Ontario Line, how the Hurontario LRT will be funded going forward and many other transportation plans to get people moving more efficiently.

The 2024 Auditor General’s report revealed serious concerns about the government’s consistent disregard for public input and its failure to transparently disclose environmental impacts due to key legislative changes.

“Over the past decade, we have found cases almost every year where ministries did not meet their (Environmental Bill of Rights) requirements to consult the public. In 2023/24, Ontarians were denied their EBR right to be consulted about three environmentally significant laws,” the report notes, with 18 percent of proposal notices reviewed by the AG leaving “out important information for the public to fully understand the proposals, including about their environmental implications.”

The environmental consequences are well-documented. Nonprofit and environmental advocacy organizations have repeatedly highlighted the risks posed by Highway 413, which threatens to carve through the Greenbelt, disrupt watersheds, impact the health of the Great Lakes, and endanger critical ecosystems—putting dozens of protected species at risk.

In 2021, the federal government raised concerns about the highway’s impact on protected species and initiated an impact assessment. However, this process was dropped in 2024 following a legal challenge from Ontario. 

Instead, a Federal Provincial Working Group was formed, and in a June 2024 presentation, obtained by The Narwhal, Environment and Climate Change Canada officials urged the Ontario government to reroute the highway to safeguard endangered species, warning that the province’s plans would not sufficiently mitigate the destruction of habitats for species like the western chorus frog and the rapids clubtail dragonfly, which may face irreversible harm.

In January 2025, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada had turned down a request for a federal impact assessment of Highway 413 noting that there is a “means other than an impact assessment”—referring to other provincial and federal regulations and pieces of legislation to address the “potential adverse effects within federal jurisdiction, and the direct or incidental adverse effects.”

The Agency argues current provincial laws are sufficient to address the potential impacts, yet these same laws are routinely ignored or have been weakened under the PC government.

Research from Environmental Defence shows that building Highway 413 could add over 17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. A significant portion of these emissions would result from paving over 400 acres of the Greenbelt and more than 2,000 acres of Ontario’s most productive farmland—Class 1 and Class 2 agricultural land—all for Highway 413.

The Greenbelt’s agricultural soils store an estimated 39.9 million tonnes of carbon, based on an average of 80 tonnes per hectare. With carbon valued at C$52 per tonne, this storage is worth approximately $2.08 billion. As an annuity, this equates to an annual value of $157 million, or $330 per hectare—highlighting the Greenbelt’s critical role in carbon sequestration and climate mitigation, according to a 2012 report by the David Suzuki Foundation.

On February 28, it will be the 20th anniversary since the Greenbelt Act was passed by the Ontario government in 2005, creating the world’s largest protected greenspace.

The Greenbelt Plan describes it as “a cornerstone of Ontario’s proposed Greater Golden Horseshoe Growth Plan, which is an overarching strategy that will provide clarity and certainty about urban structure, where and how future growth should be accommodated, and what must be protected for current and future generations.” 

In 2005, the same plan—along with the Places to Grow Act—halted the construction of the Bradford Bypass in favour of compact, transit-oriented communities. But in 2018, the Ford government revived the project after nearly two decades, despite failing to meet the conditions of the 2002 Environmental Assessment (EA) approval.

By 2020, the provincial government took things a step further, exempting the Bradford Bypass from its original EA conditions. The MTO and project consultant AECOM withheld key details from municipalities, failing to disclose proposed exemptions and changes to the EA Act while neglecting to provide comparisons between the old and new EA processes, misleading local governments into believing the upcoming studies would carry real weight. 

Highway 413 is now following the same path—proceeding without transparent comparisons between past and present EA standards.

“The 413 is going to get the Bradford Bypass treatment,” Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition Executive Director Margaret Prophet told The Pointer previously. 

The emissions caused by the highway would slow Canada’s progress toward its climate goals under the Paris Agreement, including the 2030 target of cutting emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels.

Transportation is already Ontario’s largest source of emissions, accounting for 32 percent of the province’s total output. 

As Canada’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, Ontario faces a critical choice: double down on outdated, polluting infrastructure or invest in a more sustainable future.

In 2021, the Ontario Auditor General report noted: “Our audit found the province risks its 2030 emission-reduction target, in part because climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is not yet a cross-government priority.”

“Environment Ministry fully met just 18 percent of our criteria, and the former Natural Resources Ministry, the former Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines and the Municipal Affairs Ministry each fully met 45 percent of our criteria.”

“The (Environmental Bill of Rights) Act’s coverage does not currently extend to all environmentally significant government decisions. Environmentally significant decisions are being made either by ministries that are not subject to the Act or under laws that are not subject to the Act. As a result, Ontarians do not have any EBR Act rights in relation to those decisions.”

Beyond the environmental toll, the unknown cost of projects like Highway 413 and the proposed Highway 401 tunnel raises concerns for taxpayers.

For Highway 413, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) has withheld updated cost estimates, but by 2021, estimates had already surpassed $10 billion.  

The cost of Ford’s Highway 401 tunnel proposal is estimated to be between $50 billion and $100 billion—figures Ontario simply cannot afford. Critics have said the idea is little more than an election gimmick. 

Experts like Shoshanna Saxe, assistant civil engineering professor at the University of Toronto who holds the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure, have called these projects a “bad idea”. 

She voiced concerns over the tunnel’s potential to worsen congestion, its vulnerability to flooding due to changing weather patterns, and the 20 years of construction disruption it would cause. Experts argue that such projects only encourage more car dependency, exacerbating traffic issues and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

But don’t we all need cars to get around, Kumar, the Scarborough commuter, argues. “With such a fast-growing population, at some point, you do need a car. Transit may be great in downtown Toronto, but not outside.”

Saxe counters, saying, “The more car infrastructure you build, the more people are taught to drive, the more we spend all our money on roads instead of transit, the less choice we give people.” 

The opportunity cost of these projects is another critical issue—funds for the tunnel could be better spent on initiatives that deliver greater benefits for Ontario. Both Saxe and Martin Collier, Founder of Transport Futures, recommend redirecting resources toward building multi-modal streets with transit priorities while optimizing the existing road network, not expanding it. 

Alternative policies, they say, could include:

Subsidized Truck Tolls – encourage freight traffic to use the “underused” Highway 407, reducing pressure on Highway 401.

An analysis by transportation experts at Eunomia Research reveals that shifting truck traffic from Highway 401 to Highway 407 would ease congestion for all drivers, shorten travel times for truckers, save taxpayers at least $6 billion, and safeguard the Greenbelt.

After Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles announced her party’s pledge to remove tolls for trucks across the entire Highway 407 and negotiate to buy it out of its private lease, Ford responded with his own commitment, promising to remove tolls, but only on the public portion of the highway.

“As for Highway 407, Ford has promised to remove tolls from the public portion, just like he did with Highways 412 and 418,” Collier told The Pointer. “But if he had the power to do it now, he could have done it earlier—without making it a campaign promise. That’s the funniest part of this whole thing, maybe the saddest part. Now, taxpayers from places like Northern Ontario, Eastern Ontario, or Windsor—who will never use the 407—will be subsidizing the drivers who do live near there. So it’s just a total vote getter thing.”

The Ontario Liberals, led by Bonnie Crombie, are considering dedicated truck lanes on the highway while Green Party leader Mike Schreiner supports removing truck tolls and creating dedicated truck lanes, alongside long-term efforts to reduce car dependency.

Mobility Pricing – introduce a road usage charge to fund road maintenance, transit improvements, and provide rebates to low-income drivers.

New Transportation Hierarchy – prioritize telecommuting, active transportation, and public transit over single-occupancy vehicles.

Gas Tax Reassessment – reverse the 10-cent cut to the gas tax, eventually replacing it with road usage charges as electric vehicles become more common.

Parking Stall Tax – implement a tax on parking and subsidize municipalities offering demand-responsive pricing.

Experts argue these measures could reduce car and truck volumes by 10 to 30 percent, improving traffic flow by 25 to 50 percent, while also boosting safety and reducing emissions.

Highway 413 has been a political flashpoint in both the 2022 and 2025 election cycles. Ford has made it a key part of his re-election bid, hoping to sway voters as they head to the polls on February 27. 

Meanwhile, all three opposition parties have pledged to cancel the project, promising to reverse the controversial plan revived by the PC government in 2018 after it had been cancelled by the previous Liberal government after an independent expert panel concluded it would have no benefit (critics have long said it is nothing more than a development play).

Collier says the PCs have “kind of politicized” transportation planning—turning what should be long-term infrastructure decisions into election talking points without actual details.

Email: anushka.yadav@thepointer.com

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