Friday\u2019s announcement from the Ministry of Transportation is a long overdue step but fails to get to the root of safety concerns on Northern highways.<\/p>\n
\n
\u201cAs the Official Opposition, we have had to push the government every step of the way towards getting strong safety standards on Highways 11 and 17,\u201d said Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Michael Mantha. \u201cNow the government has created a new clearing standard to avoid applying the same 8-hour clearing requirement to the Trans Canada highways as highways in the South.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \n The government has reduced the target time for clearing Highways 11 and 17 from sixteen hours to twelve hours after a snowfall.<\/em><\/p>\n \n \u201cThis is absolutely a step in the right direction, but protecting Northerners should not be a partisan issue. It is only about keeping travellers safe. We want to see the government give our highways the same priority as the 400-series and ensure that the contracts for snow removal are being fulfilled,\u201d said Mantha \u201canything less will not get to the root cause of the problem.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday\u2019s announcement from the Ministry of Transportation is a long overdue step but fails to get to the root of safety concerns on Northern highways. \u201cAs the Official Opposition, we have had to push the government every step of the way towards getting strong safety standards on Highways 11 and 17,\u201d said Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Michael …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 17:54:20","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\/57117","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57118,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57117\/revisions\/57118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}