The NDP MPP for Sudbury, Jamie West, blasted the Ford government during question period Tuesday for suggesting that the current state of treacherous and poorly maintained winter roads in northern Ontario is good enough for Northerners.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Last week, the Ford government unanimously voted against a bill from NDP MPP Guy Bourgouin (Mushkegowuk\u2014James Bay), the\u00a0Making Northern Ontario Highways Safer Act\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 legislation that would have improved winter maintenance on Highways 11 and 17.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Conservative Northern MPPs Vic Fedeli (Nipissing), Greg Rickford (Kenora-Rainy River) and Ross Romano (Sault Ste. Marie) didn\u2019t even show up for the vote. But Fedeli later contended that the bill is unnecessary because northern highways are already cleared often enough, and praised previous cuts to the department.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Auditor General showed us that the Liberals saved $36 million by cutting the monitoring of the plowing,\u201d\u00a0Fedeli wrote on social media. “MTO has made enhanced public information a priority. Public messaging includes driving according to road and weather conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s awful for families in the North to hear, according to West.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cPeople are white-knuckled on unplowed, icy highways, and it\u2019s even scarier when it\u2019s your kids out there,\u201d said West. \u201cFamilies don\u2019t want to hear about the dollars supposedly saved by making us less safe. And families sure as heck don\u2019t want to hear that the priority is \u2018enhanced public information.\u2019 Northern families want and deserve enhanced snow plowing and road safety.”<\/p>\n Conservative MPP Aris Babikian (Scarborough\u2014Agincourt) gave some insight into why the Ford Conservatives voted against the NDP bill, telling the legislature it could cost \u2018taxpayers a great deal of money without substantial benefits.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “It seems the Ford Conservatives don\u2019t believe that the safety of northern Ontario drivers is worth the money,\u201d\u00a0said West.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The NDP MPP for Sudbury, Jamie West, blasted the Ford government during question period Tuesday for suggesting that the current state of treacherous and poorly maintained winter roads in northern Ontario is good enough for Northerners. Last week, the Ford government unanimously voted against a bill from NDP MPP Guy Bourgouin (Mushkegowuk\u2014James Bay), the\u00a0Making …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[2201],"class_list":["post-25844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","tag-winter-road-maintenance"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 06:38:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25845,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25844\/revisions\/25845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}