Ford government plan to build new GTA highways imperils emissions targets, critics say

The Ontario government's plan to build a new 400-series highway in the northwestern Greater Toronto Area will drastically increase carbon emissions and make the province's climate change goals more difficult to achieve, environmental groups and transportation experts warn.

Gideon Forman, a policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation, said building Highway 413 will lead to more cars on the road and fewer trees to sequester carbon because it will pave over areas of the protected Greenbelt.

"Going ahead with Highway 413 is exactly the opposite from the direction that we need to be going as a province and indeed as a country," said Forman.

"Ontarians generally do not want to see highways going through the Greenbelt during a climate crisis."

Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy pledged new funding for both Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass in the fall economic statement on Thursday, placing the two projects at the centre of both the government's plan for economic recovery from COVID-19 and the Progressive Conservative Party's re-election strategy ahead of a June 2022 vote.

Highway 413, also known as the GTA West, is a proposed four-to-six-lane highway that would follow a 59-kilometre route from Highway 400 in Vaughan and curving west to where Highways 401 and 407 meet in Halton Hills. The Bradford Bypass would connect the 400 and 404 via a 16.2-kilometre, four-lane highway.

There's no word yet from the province on when both highways would be completed, as both Ontario and the federal government are assessing their potential environmental impact.

But the province's commitment comes days after world leaders wrapped up their participation in the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference. Provincial Environment Minister David Piccini was in attendance to "contribute the province's voice to the global conversation about climate change," according to his office.

"It's difficult to imagine a better plan for increasing carbon emissions related to transportation," said Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University in Toronto. 

Winifield said because of "induced demand," a well-established concept in transportation studies, building new highways in the GTA region will attract more vehicle and heavy-truck traffic. Indeed, the transportation ministry projects more than 300,000 trips would be taken on Highway 413 every day by 2031.

In addition to increasing transportation-related emissions, Winfield said new highways will also worsen urban sprawl due to the construction of more low-density, car-dependent communities surrounding the new roadways.

"You build highways, you will attract automobile traffic and you will attract development, which sort of effectively feeds off the highways," said Winfield.

Ontario has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, a target that was in line with the Paris Agreement but is now less ambitious than the federal government's target of reducing emissions by 40 to 45 per cent compared to 2005 levels.

The province made significant progress in recent years when former Liberal governments phased out coal-fired electricity plants. As of 2019, emissions decreased by 42 million tonnes, or 21 per cent, since 2005, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. But that progress has recently stalled, and emissions rose in 2018 before levelling off in 2019.