“All available research shows that building more highways increases traffic through a process called induced demand and attracts sprawl,” said Margaret Prophet, Executive Director of the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition. This needs to be changed to make clear that new destructive multi-lane highways are permanently prohibited in the Greenbelt. The Greenbelt Act currently allows for corridors for “infrastructure” which include highways. “The newly revealed plans for the Highway 404 extension make clear the stark choices we face in Ontario between a livable future and a devastated landscape dominated by gridlocked highways,” added Katie Krelove of the Wilderness Committee. “The Ontario government’s current push to build Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass underscores the need to ban forever these 1950s style developments,” said Tim Gray, Executive Director of Environmental Defence. These highways would also increase pressure to allow new industrial, commercial and residential development along them, while also crossing and polluting hundreds of waterways, fragmenting forests and farms, filling in wetlands and creating a death trap for many wildlife species.

This is why five organizations are calling on all political parties in Ontario’s June 2nd election to commit to making a legislative amendment to the Greenbelt Act to ban new multi-lane highways from being built through the Greenbelt.Ī new map (see below) shows that the planned Highways 413, Bradford Bypass (Holland Marsh Highway) and 404 extension northward up the east side of Lake Simcoe would directly destroy over 2000 acres of Greenbelt. Toronto | Traditional territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation – New multi-lane superhighways threaten the farms, forests and wetlands of the Greenbelt and need to be banned to protect Ontario’s water, air, food, wildlife, access to nature and our climate.

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