NDP members embark on travel through northern Ontario to document highway safety concerns

The NDP is making a road trip through northern Ontario.

Their northern Ontario members intend to raise awareness of the need to improve highway safety.

Kiiwetinoong’s MPP Sol Mamakwa says the tour will shed light on what northerners experience daily.

“It’s also a chance for us to listen to first responders, people across the north who have been affected by collisions on these highways,” says Mamakwa.

“And it is our hope that the government hears them too.”

The NDP have put forward several requests, only to have Private Member’s Bills rejected in the Legislature.

The wish lists have included commitments to twin sections of Highway 11 and 17, transferring the responsibility of winter road maintenance from private contractors back to the Ministry of Transportation, better training of transport drivers and stronger enforcement of the commercial vehicle regulations.

NDP leader Marit Stiles intends to participate in part of the tour.

“Safety issues on northern highways are a day-to-day issue,” says Stiles.

“This is an issue that we in the Ontario NDP and my colleagues standing with me and others who are not here with us today have been raising for years. But the situation has become more than critical.”

Using figures obtained from the MTO, the NDP members say that the risk of getting into a collision in northern Ontario is as much as 10 times greater than in southern Ontario.

Mushkegowuk – James Bay MPP Guy Bourgouin says northern Ontario should not have to suffer through what he calls second-class conditions.

“We have the right to have secure roads like the rest of the province,” says Bourgouin.

“That’s why we are going to listen to people and take that testimony to prove to the people in the south of what they don’t understand, because it looks like the government is not understanding. We want to bring the North’s perspective so that the government understands what we’re living with daily.”

The MPPs plan to make several stops along the way, including in the communities of Kapuskasing, Timmins, Thunder Bay, Kenora, Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie.

They plan to document their tour on social media and on video for presentation to the government at a later day.