Ontario gets green light to build Highway 413. Here’s when construction starts

Premier Doug Ford announced on Tuesday that Ontario will proceed with plans to build Highway 413 starting next year.

The highway construction project has environmental protections in place, and construction will begin sometime in 2025.

“We are delivering on our promise to build Highway 413 with a plan to fix gridlock and get drivers across Halton, Peel and York regions where they need to go faster,” said Premier Ford.

“Highway 413 will help meet the needs of our growing province as a prosperity corridor that will create thousands of good-paying union jobs during the construction phase and make life easier and more convenient for millions of drivers in the GTA and across Ontario. We’re getting it done.”

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Highway 413 is a proposed 52-kilometre highway and transitway that will include extensions to Highways 410 and 427.

It is planned to be built for $10 billion and, according to the province, will save drivers up to 30 minutes each way on their commute, adding up to one hour per day and five hours per week in people’s schedules.

In a news release, a provincial spokesperson noted that Ontario is actively undertaking fieldwork, including borehole drilling and engineering, to evaluate soil composition and bedrock depth. 

By mid-May, the province will host a market-sounding event with private sector experts to discuss ways to move construction forward as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The controversial history of Highway 413

The federal government had marked the highway project for a federal review under its powers in the Impact Assessment Act. 

Last fall, the Supreme Court of Canada found parts of that act were unconstitutional. The province then sued the federal government, asking the court to stop Ottawa from applying the impugned legislation to the 413 project. This ultimately led to an agreement. 

Critics of the proposed highway have accused the Ford government of weakening some environmental protections as it seeks a building boom of houses, roads and other major infrastructure projects such as mines. Among them was Liberal parliamentary leader John Fraser, who has said the proposed highway is nothing more than Ford and his government “rewarding land speculators.”

Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass are part of the Ford government’s $70 billion plan to build, repair and upgrade roads, highways and bridges.

The Liberals first launched Highway 413 in 2007, and a long series of consultations and studies followed. Former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne’s government paused the environmental assessment in 2015 before killing the project in 2018.

Premier Ford’s Progressive Conservative government then resurrected the project in 2019, and in 2021, the federal government marked it for an impact assessment.

With files from The Canadian Press