It’s not too late for the provincial government to take steps to improve highway maintenance in Northern Ontario.

That was the message from Mushkegowuk-James Bay MPP Guy Bourgouin (NDP) on a swing through Northern Ontario to urge the Doug Ford government to put more effort into ensuring Northerners’ safety.

“What we want to tell the government to put more resources” into ensuring safe travel in the North during the winter, Bourgouin said.

“Do the right thing.”

In November, the PC government unanimously voted against Bourgouin’s bill – the Making Northern Ontario Highways Safer Act — legislation that would have improved winter maintenance on highways 11 and 17.

“The bill was all about common sense,” Bourgouin said, and would have changed the classification system for winter highway maintenance to put highways 11 and 17 on the same footing as the 400 series of highways and the Queen Elizabeth Way in the GTA.

Under current rules, the southern Ontario highways must be bare of snow within eight hours of a snowfall. The standard for other highways – including those in Northern Ontario – is 16 hours.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” Bourgouin said. “We all know someone who tragically died or was seriously injured” in collisions on Northern highways.

What the Ford government was saying by defeating the bill, he said, is that the lives of those who live in Northern Ontario “are inconsequential.

“What is most disheartening … is that three ministers from the North didn’t show up for the debate,” he said, referring to Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, Ross Romano of Sault Ste. Marie and Greg Rickford of Kenora-Rainy River.

Fedeli said after the bill was defeated that highways 11 and 17 are now cleared within seven hours of a snowfall, less than half the length of time allowed under legislation.

“The highways are far safer today than when the Liberals were in power,” Fedeli said.

Bourgouin disputes that assertion, saying that when he asked Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney and members of the transportation committee where that figure came from, “they didn’t have an answer.

“I asked them ‘Where do you get that seven-hour average?’ They said they would get back to me, but I never got an answer.”

Bourgouin said he hopes the government “will come to its senses. We need to do something.”

Highways 11 and 17, he says, are the main corridors in Northern Ontario. And if they are closed, “nothing gets across the country. They are the lifeline and the economic hub of the communities.”

The MTO estimates 45,000 truck trips per week are conducted on the two highways, carrying half-a-million tons of commodities worth $1.24 billion.

But winter road closures – such as a recent one that shut Kapuskasing down for two days – cost millions of dollars, as well as disrupting families and keeping workers from their jobs.

“We need to do better than that,” Bourgouin says. “It’s just common sense.”

Mark Andrews, a former traffic manager for the North East Region of the Ontario Provincial Police, said the issue of highway maintenance “has plagued Northern Ontario for many years.

“The roads have changed, the highways have changed . . . the only consistent thing is the weather.”

As an OPP officer, Andrews said he stood “too many times” on the highway at the scene of “horrible collisions,” while traffic was held up for hours for the highway to be cleared.

In the winter, he said, it is particularly hard on travellers who often have to return to the nearest community to wait for the highway to reopen, or to seek detours that will add hours to their trips.

“I urge those who make the decisions to consider long and hard the cost” of these shortcomings, he said.

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Twitter: @SudburyStar