Behind the scenes this summer, even as she deals with the government’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic, local MPP and Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney continues to push the Bradford Bypass forward.
“I spoke to the premier just yesterday about the Bypass,” said Mulroney by phone this afternoon, adding, “I showed it to him on a map”, signifying how much further ahead the project stands following her big announcement this time last year that the Bypass was back in the province’s capital plan.
And, she has some good news to share: engineering and design fieldwork started up this summer, and public consultations on the route alignment should be starting in “a matter of weeks”.
“Assignment for that [field]work was awarded this summer,” she says, “And there will be formal public consultation that will be occurring…it may have been a little delayed due to COVID, but there will be public consultations, municipal consultations and additional stakeholder engagement.”
“It couldn’t happen fast enough for me,” she adds, laughing.
She pointed to the government’s push to “modernize the process to get highways built faster” while still “following the rules” to ensure the Environmental Assessment completed in 2003 is “reinitiated” and “renewed”, and that the “design and fieldwork is done in the right way…we have to really update the highway design so it meets current standards, and we have a lot of survey work that still needs to be done, but it is under way…it’s something that has been moved up the priority list.”
All that said, “We’re trying to push forward, push ahead with a timeline because I know people are excited about it, and we don’t want to delay,” she adds.
It’s been a long time coming.
Back in 2003, the government of former Premier Dalton McGuinty shelved the plan for a highway connecting the Highway 404 extension north of East Gwillimbury with Highway 400 just north of Bradford.
In 2014, Mayor Rob Keffer was elected on a plan to “get the Bypass back on track” and he and council worked to unite York Region, Simcoe County and area mayors to push in a concerted way to impress upon the government of former Premier Kathleen Wynne that the Bypass was needed.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should share that I was previously engaged to consult on the project, including succeeding in helping to get the Bypass included on the province’s growth plan in 2017. (The Minister was generous during our discussion on this point, saying, “I know it’s been a really important project that you’ve been working on yourself.”)
Then, at Carrot Fest last summer, Premier Doug Ford joined Mulroney to announce the Bypass was not only back in the plans – it was on the books. As Mulroney said yesterday, until last year, “It wasn’t in the capital plan, in fact in the list of unfunded projects it was probably in the bottom third.”
Well, that was then, and this is now.
Today, thanks to Caroline Mulroney, the Bypass is lightyears ahead of where it was even a year ago.
“We’re going to get there step by step, and my job is to keep shepherding this through the governmental process,” Mulroney said, affirming that it is her “number-one priority”.
