Sean Marshall

Tag: Politics

  • One more sign should do it…

    A gigantic school zone speed limit sign on McCowan Road in Scarborough

    Months after Doug Ford’s provincial government banned the use of municipal speed enforcement cameras, calling it a “cash grab,” new supersized school speed zone signs are going up across the province. The first ones I encountered are on McCowan Road in Scarborough, near my spouse’s family home.

    The signs, placed near St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic School south of Finch Avenue, are gigantic: nearly 2.5 metres tall, mounted over three metres above the ground, affixed to an extra large wooden pole as the new signs were too big for the standard metal poles used for that purpose. The province delivered 80 signs to the City of Toronto, but with four signs per school zone (two mounted in each direction including advance warning signs), that meant only 20 schools would get these new totems.

    The new supersized school zone sign next to an older “community safety zone” sign, affixed to a standard metal sign pole

    Before the pro-driver legislation was enacted on November 14, 2025, there was a speed camera placed on McCowan Road adjacent to the elementary school, one of 150 located in the City of Toronto. Under provincial law, municipal speed cameras were only allowed to be installed in specific designated safety zones, namely roadways adjacent to schools, parks, or seniors’ residences, and had to be accompanied with advisory signage.

    Between April 2024, when the camera was activated, and July 2025, when the camera was destroyed (one of many vandalized that year), over 19,000 speeding motorists were captured by the photo camera travelling at least 11 km/h over the posted speed limit. This was despite the existing maximum speed, school zone, community safety zone, and municipal speed camera signs on this stretch of road.

    Sign warning of a municipal speed camera in Brampton in October 2025

    Despite the high number of infractions, the cameras were doing their job; a job that the Toronto Police isn’t motivated — or able — to do. As seasoned municipal watcher Matt Elliot points out, for period between January 1, 2025 through November 14, 2025 (when camera enforcement was forced to end), 628,165 speeding tickets were issued through the automated speed enforcement program. Toronto Police’s “Vision Zero” traffic unit issued just 14,500 tickets.

    New city report notes the Toronto Police Vision Zero Enforcement Team handed out about 14,500 speeding tickets in 2025. Might sound like a lot, but well, compare and contrast.

    — Matt Elliott (@graphicmatt.com) 2026-06-03T14:46:06.746Z
    Post by City Hall Watcher Matt Elliot

    Despite all those tickets issued, the cameras were especially effective at reducing speeding in school zones. A 2025 Toronto Metropolitan University/SickKids Hospital study found that speed enforcement cameras reduced speeding by 45 per cent and reduced speeds by most drivers by more than 10 km/h.

    Once the cameras were taken down, speeds went back up. On Parkside Drive adjacent to High Park, were one camera was vandalized multiple times (with no arrests made), the number of motorists speeding 20 km/h or more than the 40 km/h speed limit went up 235%. In Ottawa, city data found that speeding went up considerably in school zones once the consequences were taken away.

    Active police enforcement remains a valuable tool because officers can lay charges that automatic speed cameras can not catch, including distracted, impaired, and dangerous driving. But policing has a dark history of racial profiling and has a pro-motorist “windshield bias,” while speed enforcement and red light cameras do not discriminate.

    Furthermore, North American roads are designed for excessive speed and not for the safety of vulnerable road users. We rely on signs to advise motorists of how we expect them to drive, rather than road design that requires attentive and slower driving. Speed cameras were a useful stopgap that worked a lot better than signage.

    So, the new supersized signs going up are not a solution to unsafe driving: they are just another mere indication that children, seniors, and all pedestrians and cyclists don’t really matter, especially to politicians like Doug Ford.

  • Deadcatting: Doug Ford’s big dig

    We need a Highway 401 Tunnel like we need a dead cat on the dining room table

    On Wednesday, September 25, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, along with transportation minister Pradmeet Sarkaria, announced that the provincial government would fund a feasibility study on building a new highway tunnel under Highway 401 from Peel Region to Durham Region, along with an unspecified new transit facility.

    Earlier this week, Doug Ford exclaimed that those living in homeless encampments and anyone else without housing who he thought could work should “get off their a-s-s and start working like everyone else.” The day before that, we learned that Ford’s Progressive Conservative government would prohibit new bicycle infrastructure if it took road space away from motorists.

    The old Doug Ford — the angry bull-in-a-china-shop we remember from 2018-2019 — is back, and it is clear that governing, in fact, has not changed him. After six years, and a rumoured early provincial election, Doug Ford will need to run on something, because there’s little to show for his promises of getting housing built, transit projects completed, and hospitals fixed. An RCMP investigation continues to look at the government’s Greenbelt land swaps, and it is rare for provincial or federal governments in Canada to get elected with a majority three times in a row. So here we are.

    But after three straight days of political red meat policy announcements, the strategy has become clear: Doug Ford is “deadcatting.” Dead cat theory, popularized during the leadership of former London mayor and British prime minister Boris Johnson, is the practice of suddenly throwing down an outrageous policy or statement to divert attention away from an unpleasant topic. The shocked audience is suddenly compelled to talk about the metaphorical dead cat thrown on the table. In the United States in recent weeks, dead cats have become less metaphorical, with baseless and racist accusations against Haitian migrants in Ohio spread by Donald Trump, vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, and far-right commentators.

    The strategy is thought to come from Lynton Crosby, an Australian conservative strategist who worked on Johnson’s mayoral and UK Conservative leadership campaigns, as well as Canada’s Conservative Party in 2015.

    There is no way a Highway 401 tunnel will be built. Not only would it be the longest road tunnel in the world, but the long on-ramps and off-ramps required to access a deep-bore urban highway tunnel will make it completely infeasible. The proposal also completely ignores the problem of induced demand, and it won’t solve the problem of where the traffic goes when it gets off that additional highway. For these reasons, it was especially disappointing to see the Toronto and Region Board of Trade (TRBoT) endorse the idea.

    TRBoT post on September 25, 2024

    There are things that can help alleviate traffic. One is ensuring that transit projects are completed, funded, and maintained. That doesn’t just mean building and completing projects like the Crosstown LRT and the Ontario Line, it’s also making sure the system remains in excellent condition to avoid problems like the persistent slow orders in the Toronto Subway. It also means making the best use of existing infrastructure, like Highway 407, for goods movement. Highway 407 passes by every major freight yard in Greater Toronto, but trucks clog Highway 401, Highway 7, and Steeles Avenue instead because of the high tolls. And it means active transportation improvements, like bike lanes and multi-use paths.

    What we don’t need are more dead cats to distract us from the real problems.