Saving lives, protecting supply chains and strengthening Canada’s economy.
That’s how the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) views the modernization of Highways 11 and 17.
FONOM is calling for the project to be a nation-building priority under the Building Canada Act.
“The provincial and federal governments are currently looking at Northern Ontario as the probable upcoming financial breadbasket because of mining and critical minerals,” says Danny Whalen, FONOM President. “We’re still looking at this from the point of people are dying on these highways at an incredible rate and we have to do something about it.”
Calling the Northern Ontario stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway the country’s weakest link, FONOM is proposing what it calls a ‘toolbox approach’.
That includes strategic four-lane widening, selective twinning, and 2+1 highways—to improve safety, reduce costs, and minimize environmental impacts along the 3,000-kilometre corridor from Québec to Manitoba.
“We’re not going to mandate 2+1. We’re not going to mandate twinning. We’re going to leave that up to the experts,” says Whalen. “But we think it’s past time for the federal government to participate in this.”
He says their proposal is gaining ‘stronger support” than he had imagined.
“We had a productive meeting with the Ontario Road Builders Association,” he says. “I’ve had great contact with federal ministers asking for more information and our MP for Nipissing-Timiskaming, [Pauline] Rochefort has been extremely active on our behalf.”
Whalen says they don’t know what the outcome will be, but they’re encouraged.
-Reported by Richard Coffin
