To the editor:
To suggest winter driving conditions are responsible for the number of tragedies occuring in NWO is simply denying the reality of government cutback policy.
The Liberal Government squandered $3 billion on failed programs, so now it has to make cutbacks where it will have the least impact on their success come the election.
The Northwest has seen OPP detachments closed, resulting in little or no police presence; nursing stations on limited hours, as well as inadequate road maintenance.
Drivers are being killed on the highways in Northwestern Ontario both summer and winter because we have leaders of both parties whose answer to demands for major improvements has been the same: “There’s not enough volume to warrant the expense.”
The first time I received that response was from the minister of the Department of Highways in 1957.
The only thing that has changed is the name of the minister and the ministry he is responsible for.
When Premier Kathleen Wynne was the minister of transport in 2011, she declared, “Ontario has the safest highways on the North American Continent.”
I suggest she tell that to those who are left to mourn those killed on these safest highway.
Colyne Gibbons,
Upsala
