Construction delays ahead

Even after tentative deal with Ottawa, Highway 413 still faces several roadblocks

This article was written by Noor Javed and was published in the Toronto Star on April 11, 2024.

Signs announcing Highway 413 popping up around the GTA and a tentative agreement between Ontario and Ottawa to drop a key federal demand make it seem like the controversial project is about to shift into high gear.

But, while the Doug Ford government’s dream of building the GTA West Highway may be one step closer to reality, the province can’t hit cruise control yet, critics say.

The multibillion-dollar project will still require Ottawa’s OK for development on the most environmentally sensitive parts of the route, they say.

“There’s still a whole collection of federal approvals and permits that would be required for this highway to proceed,” said Mark Winfield, professor of environmental and urban change at York University. Winfield said the highway would require permits under the federal Fisheries Act, and likely the Species at Risk Act and Migratory Birds.

“This doesn’t solve Doug Ford’s federal problem and, in some ways, raises more difficult questions for the federal government when the issues of permits comes up — are they going to blindly rubber stamp them and approve massive destruction of fish habitat?” he said.

“In some ways, this has become messier for the federal government.”

Last month, the federal government and province submitted a joint consent order to a Federal Court to cancel a federal environmental impact study of the project.

While the court has yet to accept the order, its approval would remove a significant roadblock that the province says has delayed the construction of the 60-kilometre highway that will connect Vaughan to Milton through Caledon.

The province, federal government and Impact Assessment Agency of Canada all said they could not comment further as the matter was still before the courts.

Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, said he’s been getting a lot of questions from Ontarians about what this means for environmental protections along a route that will cut through the Greenbelt, thousands of hectares of farmland and cut across GTA area streams and rivers more than 100 times.

In a note sent out to supporters last week, Gray said there are “still lots of steps that need to be taken to get the approvals necessary to build Highway 413,” he wrote, including land expropriation, engineering studies, federal responsibilities and Indigenous consultation.

In the memo, Gray said there are concerns the “provincial government could try to bypass these requirements and/or act illegally to destroy key critical values along the route.”

Some of those concerns arise because of the province’s efforts this year to streamline or remove environmental regulations around everything from expropriations to highway projects to protections for endangered species in Ontario.

“As long as Ford commands a majority in Ontario, there are very few constraints,” said Winfield. “But they can’t legislate away” that the 413 needs federal approval and consultations with Indigenous communities, he said.

As part of the Get it Done Act, introduced in February, the province proposed changes that would allow for the expropriation of land prior to the completion of environmental approvals. Almost all of the land along the 413 highway is privately owned and would require expropriation, which could take years.

In 2021, a Star investigation found eight of the province’s most powerful landowners own land along the highway route.

The province has also introduced changes to the Endangered Species Act, specifically identifying the presence of, and protecting habitats for, the Redside Dace, which is considered to be a species at risk in Ontario.

According to Mark Heaton, a senior biologist with environmental charity Ontario Streams, there are at least seven waterways including creeks along the route of the proposed 413 highway where Redside Dace have been found.

But Heaton said the proposed changes to the act, including shortening the time frame for the presence of fish in a waterway from 20 to10 years, and changing the criteria for areas that are “recovery” areas for the fish — will significantly reduce protection for the species across the province and along the highway route.

Heaton added that the Redside Dace’s habitat is generally incompatible with urbanism, which is why the species numbers have plummeted over the years. And the presence of increased sediment in rivers during development from grading the land (which could take up to two years) as well as any contaminants from cars and the road once it’s built would end up in the fish habitat.

“It could be a disaster for the species,” he said.

Gray said it’s hard to imagine how the federal government will justify the destruction of species’ at-risk habitat when it comes time to issuing permits for the project.

“I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult to … bend themselves into a pretzel to allow the destruction of this rare and endangered fish,” said Gray.

“Allowing this highway to go ahead would essentially mean that the federal government is saying ‘Yes, you can extirpate incredibly rare species and we will give you a permit to do it.’ ”

There’s still a whole collection of federal approvals and permits that would be required for this highway to proceed.

MARK WINFIELD YORK UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR