THUNDER BAY – Ontario’s official Opposition leader travelled to Thunder Bay on Tuesday in an attempt to pressure the provincial government to act on highway safety.
Citing five recent fatal collisions on Northwestern Ontario highways, Marit Stiles said the ruling Conservatives need to act swiftly to make highways in the region less dangerous. She encouraged them to pass a private member’s bill banning passing on double yellow lines in the province.
Stiles also demanded stricter oversight of truck drivers and more regulations surrounding their training, the staffing of inspection stations 24/7, and promised to work with city officials, if elected in 2026, to consider removing transports from the provincially owned section of Highway 102.
The city has considered eliminating trucks from Dawson Road, but has yet to finalize its long-sought designated truck route.
Stiles called out local MPPs, along with Premier Doug Ford, for their inaction on her party’s solutions and proposed legislation aimed at highway safety in Ontario’s North.
“They can’t say they haven’t heard about it. They can’t pretend they don’t know. The truth is they’re completely out of touch with the realities of people in Northern Ontario and they refuse to acknowledge them,” Stiles said.
“Doug Ford and his government continue to ignore the very urgent need for safety and improvements on Northern highways. We are calling on the government to pass our solutions.”
To the province’s credit, a new inspection station is scheduled to open in 2024 along Highway 11/17, and twinning work continues between Thunder Bay and Nipigon. Four-laning work is also being conducted west of Kenora.
“But it needs to happen urgently,” Stiles said. “We need the government to ensure that people in Northern Ontario have the same safe and reliable access to highways as people in the south. Northern Ontarians right now are paying with their lives.”
Travis McDougall, co-founder of Truckers for Safer Highways, joined the NDP news conference via Zoom and said the biggest difference the province could make would be enforcing the regulations surrounding commercial drivers.
It’s too sporadic, he said.
“Currently it’s random or by complaints made by the public or drivers at large,” McDougall said.
“It’s affecting the lives of Northern Ontarians, but it’s also affecting the lives of truck drivers. There are many pictures and incidents where we’ve all seen it, where trucks have crashed into each other. These are all unnecessary events happening.
“They’re making poor choices, passing each other in bad and dangerous spots. It’s not only the people of Northern Ontario losing their lives, but truck drivers out here doing their jobs losing their lives.”
Some of the lives lost are because commercial drivers don’t have the requisite training needed to navigate Ontario highways.
“New drivers are not getting the training they need. They’re getting the training on how to pass the road test, but they’re not getting trained on how to be a proper, safe professional driver on our highways,” McDougall said.
Northwood Coun. Dominic Pasqualino said 40 years ago he’d drive 1,600 kilometres a week and used to feel safe around truckers in poor weather.
Not so today, he said.
“Unfortunately now, most of the drivers are new and I would do the opposite at this point. Even then there were fatalities, but not to the degree there are now. You would think if 40 years goes by the roads would be safer and not more dangerous,” Pasqualino said.
NDP MPP Lise Vaugeois, who has advocated for highway safety at Queen’s Park, said 27 people dying on Northwestern Ontario highways in 2023 is 27 too many.
“We’ve got very specific recommendations, and would require that commercial trucking schools be audited every two years and that the auditors themselves are fully trained to recognize what has to happen at a school.
"Often they know the paperwork, but they don’t know what’s required, and the reason is there are only eight inspectors for over 500 schools in all disciplines. That’s a problem,” Vaugeois said.
