Stepping in to address a question on the province’s long-stalled four-laning of Highway 69, provincial Northern Development Minister Greg Rickford asked, “Where are the feds?”
“You’re talking about (matters of) national interest, and we need to make sure that we have a federal government that’s partnering with us on those priorities and not making highway safety a political decision,” Rickford said at the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities conference in Sudbury on Monday.
Completing the four-laning of the final 68 kilometres of Highway 69, he added, is an issue that “offers up both safety and economic efficiency for the safe passage of people and the efficient passage of goods and services.”
Rickford cited U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which pledged 90 per cent of the cost of construction of interstate highways, as an example to follow.
“I’m not happy,” Nickel Belt Liberal MP Marc Serré told Sudbury.com in response to Rickford’s comments. “It’s bullshit.”
The federal government has pledged $169.2 million toward four-laning the remaining section of Highway 69.
Serré made the funding announcement with then-Sudbury Liberal MP Paul Lefebvre (now Greater Sudbury’s mayor) in May 2019.
“We negotiated and wanted the province to be part of that announcement, and five times the province refused,” Serré said, clarifying that the federal funding remains in place and earmarked for Highway 69.
Despite the federal government’s financial commitment, Serré said, “Highway 69 is 100-per-cent provincial responsibility.”
“Minister Rickford does this quite often, with his partisan BS comments, and in this case with Highway 69 he’s actually playing with people’s lives,” Serré said. “He needs to apologize because that’s totally irresponsible.”
Completing the four-laning of Highway 69 still needs to happen, Serré said, adding that while he thought the provincial government could handle it, perhaps he was wrong.
“We need to figure out a way to work together — the province, the feds, First Nations and CN, to make this happen, because people are dying on this road,” Serré said. “I’m willing to work with the province.”
In response to Rickford's comments, Sudbury NDP MPP Jamie West told Sudbury.com the province just needs to follow through on their 2018 election promise to finish four-laning Highway 69.
“They can point fingers at different levels of government, but the reality is that the highway is a provincial responsibility,” he said. “If they’re not taking the lead in showing leadership, pointing a finger is just a way to distract from what’s going on.”
West said he has been following the Highway 69 issue closely since he was first elected six years ago, and isn’t seeing much progress.
Last year’s budget stated the province has continued work on Highway 69, West added.
“The reality is, the only thing they’ve done is not cancel the contracts that have been in place when they were elected,” he said.
“There’s been no movement, I haven’t had an update from the communities in the area in the last six months.”
Provincial Transportation Associate Minister Vijay Thanigasalam clarified during the conference that the province has money in place to complete four-laning the final 68 kilometres of Highway 69, are working with First Nations and waiting on federal approval regarding environmental assessments. There is still no timeline for its projected completion.
In 2021, the province announced that they’d opened another 14 kilometres of four-laned Highway 69 in the French River area. There have been 68 kilometres left of the broader project since that time.
The provincial government’s failure to finish four-laning the final 68-kilometre stretch of Highway 69 between French River and Parry Sound came up a few times through this week’s three-day convention, which is slated to end at mid-day Wednesday.
On Tuesday, both Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Ontario Liberal Party Leader Bonnie Crombie pledged to complete the project if given the opportunity during the next election.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
