![]() The province is holding a public information session on the highway on April 22.Alcoholism was identified in 1956 as an illness by the American Medical Association (AMA). “We would only consider proceeding with the Bradford Bypass if all of the environmental assessment conditions were appropriately addressed.” “Building and expanding highways is important, but only where and when they make sense,” she said in a statement. Liberal environment critic Lucille Collard also said the project needs another look. “There needs to be a new set of eyes put on these megaprojects,” she said. Ontario NDP environment critic Sandy Shaw said it’s “irresponsible” for the government to push forward without releasing such basic information. “If you're so believing in this, that this is such a great idea, give everybody the information that you have and let the public say what they think needs to happen.” “This is all just backwards,” Prophet said. Tremblay didn’t answer when asked whether the province is looking at alternatives to the bypass, but said traffic issues are expected to increase “even with all currently planned transportation and transit improvements.” The old assessment didn’t look at whether the province could help congestion issues by increasing public transit or improving existing roads. ![]() “Construction costs will be determined when engineering refinements and preliminary design are advanced further,” Tremblay said.Īlthough the government contends the bypass would save drivers up to 35 minutes, Tremblay declined to provide the study behind those figures to Canada’s National Observer, saying it was still in progress. The province hasn’t released an estimate of how much the highway could cost. Other questions are also unresolved, Prophet said. The new set of studies the government is currently working on will look at impacts to wildlife, fish, groundwater, agriculture and air quality. “As part of the preliminary design, the project team will carefully consider all impacts to wetland areas and will continue to work with environmental agencies, municipalities and other stakeholders to identify potential strategies to mitigate these impacts.” “We all share the same goal of safeguarding the environment,” she said in the statement. Tremblay did not directly answer when asked how the government plans to mitigate those issues. But that work was never done and the law has since changed. In 1997, highway projects were also subject to a federal environmental assessment, which might have resolved those problems, Bowman said. (That area accounts for less than one per cent of the overall area of the Holland Marsh wetlands, the province says.) The highway would also cross over nearly 11 hectares of sensitive wetlands, roughly the size of 27 football fields. That assessment also didn’t account for the climate crisis or research showing that building new roads doesn’t reduce congestion, a concept called induced demand. It also indicated that levels of benzene, a carcinogen emitted by car exhaust, could be higher than what’s currently allowed, but did not include an assessment of possible health impacts. The assessment predicted severe pollution issues, which could impact fish habitat, Lake Simcoe, and private wells in the area, Bowman said. now horrifically out of date,” said Laura Bowman, a staff lawyer at the environmental law non-profit Ecojustice, the group leading the charge. In their letter to Wilkinson, the environmental groups said their concerns centred around the 1997 environmental assessment. Federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is expected to make a decision on whether Ottawa will intervene in May, at the same time he rules on a similar request about Highway 413. In February, a coalition of more than 20 environmental groups asked the federal government to take over the environmental assessment for the Bradford Bypass. But even then, the project didn’t move forward until 2020, when the Progressive Conservatives started pursuing plans to forgo the new environmental assessment. The project was dormant until 2017, when Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals put it back on the table. Though previous governments conducted the environmental assessment in 1997 and approved it in 2002, the McGuinty government shelved it in the mid-2000s. The idea of a new highway connecting the 404 and the 400 goes back to at least 1979. Map from Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition Key questions about highway unanswered, critics say The proposed route of the Bradford Bypass would run through a portion of the Greenbelt.
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