New Democratic Party candidates across the North are promoting a highway safety campaign for Northern Ontario families during the current provincial election.
In Sudbury, Nickel Belt candidate France Gélinas said the safety campaign can be focused on many local areas such as Highway 69, Highway 144 and Highway 17, but the concern is all across Northern Ontario.
"These highways are our lifelines, used daily for work, school and community activities, yet they remain unsafe," Gélinas said from a coffee shop on the edge of Highway 144 in Azilda on Wednesday.
“We're in Northern Ontario, and it's the winter and there's an election going on. People have a lot of topics they want to bring forward. But everywhere I go in Nickel Belt, I hear about our roads.
"People are afraid to drive. People need to drive to go to school, to go to work, to go to a doctor's appointment. And the roads are not safe, so the NDP is putting a plan together to change things to make our roads safe," she said.
She said the NDP plan is focused on four key action items that will save lives on Northern highways.
Gélinas said one of the key concerns is that the training and evaluation of new commercial truck drivers has been privatized. She said the NDP plan is to change that.
"We will bring back the evaluation under the MTO (Ministry of Transportation Ontario). So before you're allowed to drive a transport truck, the Ministry of Transportation will make sure that you have the knowledge and skills to do that safely," she said.
The second priority is about winter road maintenance in the North, which is also assigned mainly to private sector companies. Gélinas said private contractor companies would not be allowed to slack off on highway snow plowing.
"We are bringing back MTO employees who will make sure that those contracts are respected, are being enforced. If your contract says that after one centimetre (of snowfall) you have to go and plow, you're not going to wait till there's an inch (2.5 centimetres) before you go out and plow. You will do what the contract tells you to do," she said.
Gélinas said if the private contractors cannot live up to the demands of the road plowing contract, then the work should be handed back to the MTO.
She said the third safety priority is on a more personal level for Northerners.
"Every vehicle registered in Northern Ontario will have to have winter tires, like they do in Quebec," said Gélinas. “Second, during drivers training for new drivers, we will make sure that they are assessed on their ability to drive in the winter.”
Gélinas said the last priority will take a bit longer, but it's all about making the highways physically safer. She said this would include completing the four-laning of Highway 69 into Sudbury.
She said there are also parts of Highway 17 and even Highway 144 should have four-laned areas. She also believes that railway freight traffic needs to be stepped up in the future to the point that fewer trucks are needed on the highways.
Gélinas said she is aware that the highway safety concern has been an NDP issue in the North for years, but the governing parties have never responded in a positive way she said.
"I would say whenever we bring that forward, they always use the same line -- Ontario has the safest highway in the world. This is what they answer back to us," she said, and added that it is frustrating to get that attitude from other parties.
"There are highways in Ontario that are safer, but not in Northern Ontario. Things need to change in Northern Ontario, and we are never a priority."
Len Gillis is a reporter at Sudbury.com.