407 Tolls: Is This The Best The NDP’s Got?

On The ONDP’s Insane Campaign Launch Policy

This is the highest priority right now?

We’ve got a tariff threat that could be imposed as early as Saturday, we have a cost of living crisis, the number of people without a primary doctor is rising, school class sizes and hospital wait times up, a massive housing crisis, a stagnant if not recessionary economy even before the tariffs that’s been propped up by immigration, and a Government that is allowing underfunding and lack of investment in real priorities to slowly bleed us dry. And Marit Stiles’ first announcement - her first fucking announcement - is about removing 407 tolls and maybe buying it back.

In other news the NDP project to lose 13 seats at the next election per my latest model update, and that’s without including a potential loss to Sarah Jama’s independent bid, after being rejected as a candidate by the NDP. The combined progressive parties at Queen’s Park will stand at 31 seats after the election, on these numbers, which would represent a 9 seat decrease from the last election. And the NDP’s best fucking idea - at a time when they’re facing existential threats outside the Golden Horseshoe, in seats like Windsor and London and Thunder Bay and northern Ontario - is to undo the tolls on the 407 and maybe consider buying it back with borrowed money.

And people wonder why I drink so much.

..

On policy merits this is a crock of shit. The mechanism by which the Ontario government would enact this no tolls policy would be, seemingly, forcing the private owners of the 407 to negotiate or face unclear legislative action that wouldn’t likely stand up in court anyways. For the trucks part of this, my guess - and this is a guess, given that there’s no detail released and I’m cribbing most of this from one Global article - is the government is going to subsidize the tolls that are charged to commercial vehicles on the privately owned part of the 407.

Now, Stiles doesn’t seem to have any answers to any of these questions - how are we finding the $35B to buy the highway, why would the 407 owners ever feel compelled to renegotiate the contract, how you’re going to get the tolls off the 407 without buying it - but if you take the NDP’s central claim at face value then they’re going to take an at least $600M hit a year to the public finances paying the tolls for citizens - except, of course, it’ll be way more, because the whole point of making the 407 free is to move traffic to the 407, which would increase the usage and increase the bill. Genius, ain’t it?

The other problem, as a chorus of a million urbanists will tell you, is this won’t actually solve congestion. Induced demand is real, pricing congestion reduces it, and we literally have evidence of this in New York City. The idea that the correct move for serious progressives is a Dipper version of “Just One More Lane, Bro” road politics is so offensive to actual serious progressives as to be disqualifying.

That this is their first big announcement is also horrifying. There are any number of issues right now that are more important than this, but this is where Stiles goes? It’s insane. She’s still sticking to her Homes Ontario public building idea that won’t work and has been regularly lambasted as not even coming close to pencilling out, her big health care announcement has been allowing admin staff to do more paperwork, and this is where she’s starting.

Bonnie Crombie, despite my many issues with her and the fact that the Liberals are flat out lying about being right about the Billion Dollar Boozedoggle, at least came out with three solid policies first that meet the moment. Tax relief, more doctors, and an ambitious and real housing reform plan is real action for real people. This is a boon to lawyers and consultants and the private owners of the 407, and it’s beneath contempt that they’re pushing it.

But it’s also a political disaster for Stiles, too, and more evidence she’s not understanding the issue facing the NDP. I did this rant on the Scrimshaw Show today with David Coletto again, but say it with me now: The NDP are two parties stitched together by first past the post and the urban Toronto-ite leadership core of the NDP doesn’t have an understanding of the problems outside of the Horseshoe. How does spending billions of dollars, which is what this will cost in any configuration of the actual promise, on GTA commuters make it easier to hold Windsor West, Thunder Bay, Timiskaming, all three of the London seats, and Angola-Manitoulin, 7 seats combined held by the NDP where the 407 is an electoral nothing that are either flipping in my model or within 5%. Toss in 2 Hamiltons and 3 Niagaras (sorry to my people in St. Catherines for lumping you in there), where there could be some impact but it’s not guaranteed, and you’re seeing a huge expenditure for little political gain.

If the NDP want to save the furniture, they need to have faith that Toronto will hold. Bonnie Crombie won’t be a great leader to help the Liberals win seats like St. Paul’s or Toronto Centre, and she will spend most of her campaign in the suburbs trying to get opposition through Mississauga, Halton, the “new” city of Toronto (Eglinton-Lawrence, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), and Eastern Ontario. Any day Bonnie spends in Toronto proper is a waste, because she is plainly not the right Liberal leader to truly strike a blow against the NDP there. Given that, the NDP need to get the fuck out of Toronto, and when they do they need to go to Scarborough, which cares far more about actual usable transit infrastructure than they do the 407.

The thing I am consistently told about Marit Stiles is that she is much more impressive than I give her credit for being, and maybe they’re right. People who know the NDP’s internal machinations better than me insist that the fault for this nonsense lies beyond Stiles, and they’re probably right. But this is nonsensical, and unacceptable.

The NDP just proposed an uncosted 407 “solution” that will not reduce congestion and will only serve to line the pockets of corporate interests and private owners. It is a travesty of governance and political idiocy. It is a farce.

If this is the best they’ve got, we’re fucked.

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