Ontario NDP host highway safety town hall in Thunder Bay

Following the conclusion of the Ontario New Democratic Party’s (ONDP) northern Ontario road tour, ONDP MPP’s Sol Mamakwa, John Vanthof, Guy Bourgoin, and Lise Vaugeois were joined on Monday by their leader Marit Stiles to host a town hall at Thunder Bay’s Slovak Legion Hall.

The town hall comes as deaths on northern highways are repeatedly casting safety into the spotlight.

Attendees packed the Legion hall to share stories of lost loved ones, fears of driving on unsafe roads, and frustration at the glacial pace of highway twinning.

Survivors of accidents described lifelong physical and mental trauma, while those forced to say goodbye to friends or family prematurely explained the difficulty of moving on.

Family members of long-haul truckers voiced the terminal anxiety they feel when their spouses, siblings, or parents are on the job.

At one point, ONDP leader Marit Stiles asked the attendees to raise their hands if they had ever experienced a close call on a northern highway.

In response, the packed room erupted with raised hands.

Stiles expressed surprise at the large turnout, but not at the feelings shared.

“I think it’s an indication that people are really desperate to have change and to be safe,” she remarked.

Many solutions were discussed: beyond twinning or building “2+1” highways, locals also called for a deeper licensing process for truckers, with suggestions such as graduated licensing, apprenticeships, or even treating the profession as a skilled trade.

Some called for empathy for new truckers pressured or exploited by a degenerating system, asking for better worker protections; others pointed out that dangerous driving manifests in cars as well as trucks, and argued safer roads — the more systemic approach — could better account for human error.

Stiles had her own suggestion: treat the upgrades to Highway 11/17 as a nation-building project of national importance and urgency, due to the economic impacts of frequent highway closures.

“If [premier Doug Ford] can’t see that it’s bad enough that people are losing their lives and families are torn apart, then maybe he’ll see the logic in the fact that our economy is being ground to a halt multiple times a day with the shutdown of those highways,” she said. “That there’s no way the road through the Ring of Fire is going to be a reality if we have road safety issues like we have right now in Northern Ontario.”

Lise Vaugeois, MPP for Thunder Bay—Superior North, has been an outspoken critic of highway safety in the north. She agrees with those who call for a “system-wide” approach to highway safety.

Beyond simple infrastructure upgrades like more medians, shoulders, and passing lanes, Vaugeois points to a lack of oversight in the trucking industry.

“The Ontario Trucking Association says that 90 per cent of trucking fleets have not been audited. There is no control, there is no supervision happening in the trucking industry,” she explains.

A recurring theme at the town hall was that everyone more or less agrees on what is needed to make highways safer, but that there is a lack of political will to force the issue.

Some of the attendees suggested blocking highways, or threatening strikes.

While ONDP members refrained from outright endorsing civil disobedience, they encouraged disgruntled highway travellers to organize, build movements, and place steady, long-term pressure on provincial leaders to keep their promises.

Stiles promised her party would do the same at the provincial legislature.

“We’re going to keep going back at them with more motions, more bills to continue to raise the pressure on the government,” she assured. “I don’t think they’re going to want to say no this time after so many people are losing their lives. I think it’s going to look very badly for the government, so I hope they will agree.”