Twinning Trans-Canada should be No. 1 priority By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 19, 2022

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2022 (813 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For truckers and Manitobans who have seasonal cabins and homes in northwestern Ontario’s cottage country, the busy undivided stretch of Trans-Canada Highway just before the Manitoba/Ontario boundary has always been a white-knuckler, especially during the summer and on weekends.

For a Dryden, Ont. family, it proved deadly. Mark Lugli, 54, and his 17-year-old son, Jacob, were killed in a head-on collision near Barren Lake in July 2019, a tragedy that renewed calls for safety improvements on that stretch of road – including finally twinning the last remaining undivided section of Trans-Canada Highway in Manitoba.

The province is only now in the “early stages” of exploring how to divide the 17-kilometre stretch between Falcon Lake and the Ontario border. Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Doyle Piwniuk said twinning that section has challenges owing to the topography of the area. “There’s a lot of work there … when it comes to rocks. There is a lot of topography we have to deal with,” he said. “It’s going to be a substantial investment to twin that portion of the highway.”

“It’s rocky, costly, we’ll look into it” seems a flimsy response, considering just kilometres away in Ontario, also located in the Canadian Shield, a larger twinning project is already underway on the approximately 40-kilometre stretch of the Trans-Canada — known there as Highway 17 — between the provincial boundary and the Kenora bypass.

The first part of a three phase plan – which is also “a lot of work,” including rock-blasting and clearing thick brush — is due to be completed by 2024. It, too, is a “substantial investment”; so far, the first phase of the project has cost Ontario $31 million.

But then, a national corridor has always been a substantial investment. The Trans-Canada Highway, known as Highway 1 in western Canada, is among the most ambitious infrastructure projects Canada has ever undertaken, spanning 7,821 kilometres and stretching from Victoria, B.C. to St. John’s, Nfld.

The 1950 Trans-Canada Highway Act is a key example of what can happen when there is co-operation between federal and provincial levels of government; the initial highway, which officially opened in 1962, was built on a cost-shared basis.

That kind of commitment seems unfathomable in today’s political climate.

As one would expect on a 60-year-old highway, provinces have made many investments over the past six decades, improving stretches with twinning projects and adding routes to improve interconnectivity, such as the creation of the Yellowhead Highway through the northern Prairies and the Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island with the mainland.

There’s no question twinning this dangerous section will be an undertaking for the reasons Mr. Piwniuk outlined, but it is necessary. And it’s not something to be “looked at in the future.” The urgency is there for those who use the highway; what’s required now is some political will.

As the Free Press has pointed out, there’s money available for this project. Since 2017, Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government has been leaving infrastructure money on the table; a reallocation of funds toward a twinning project – one that might prevent tragic collisions such as the one that claimed a father and son – seems like a prudent choice.

In the meantime, there are safety mechanisms the province could implement right now, such as better signage alerting motorists to turn-offs onto lake-access roads, and lowering the speed limit from 100 km/h on that undivided stretch. It’s worth noting the speed limit in Ontario is 90 km/h.

It’s time for the Trans-Canada Highway to be No. 1 on Manitoba’s infrastructure priority list.