Guilbeault Says Ottawa Will Stop Investing in New Road Infrastructure

Ottawa Will Cease Investing in New Road Infrastructure, Guilbeault Says

February 14, 2024 TruthUSA

Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says Ottawa has decided to stop investing in new road infrastructure, saying the country’s existing network is “perfectly adequate.”

“Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure. Of course, we will continue to be there for cities, provinces, and territories to maintain the existing network, but there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” Mr. Guilbeault said during a conference on public transit in Montreal on Feb. 12, according to The Montreal Gazette.

The environment minister said the Liberal government believes that federal investments in public transportation, territorial planning, and densification means economic and human development goals can be met “without more enlargement of the road network.”

The money that has usually been used to invest in asphalt and concrete for roads would be better invested into projects to fight climate change and negate its harms, he added.

Mr. Guilbeault said funding more road networks would encourage more car usage, in turn increasing congestion and encouraging even more road development. He noted that around a quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, and Ottawa has been heavily funding programs to get more Canadians using public transit instead of private vehicles.

Mr. Guilbeault also said that being overly reliant on electric transportation to solve climate change would be “an error, a false utopia that will let us down over the long term.”

Infrastructure Spending

When the Liberals first came to power in 2016, they promised to spend $12 billion on new infrastructure, including $3.4 billion over three years to upgrade and improve public transit and $5 billion for green infrastructure. No money was specifically allocated towards building new road networks.

Back in 2021, the Liberals announced they would spend an additional $15 billion over the next eight years on public transportation projects across Canada, with $6 billion being given in short-term funding and distributed on a project-by-project basis. The rest of the money was to go towards a permanent transit fund, meant to to provide funding so cities could build and expand their public transit systems.

That funding emphasized investments in public transportation like buses, subways, bicycle trails, and other public transit infrastructure, and not on new roads. The investments were also meant to reduce pollution by switching to “cleaner electrical power, including supporting the use of zero-emission vehicles and related infrastructure.”

Yet, Canada’s swiftly expanding population may require an expansion of the country’s road networks. Canada brought in a record number of new immigrants last year, with the population increasing by more than 430,000 in the third quarter of 2023 alone. In 2024, around 500,000 immigrants are expected to come to Canada, which is likely to increase traffic congestion.

According to the mapping and navigation company TomTom’s annual traffic index from 2024, Toronto ranked as the third-worst city in the world for congestion, behind only the cities of London and Dublin. Additionally, Vancouver was ranked as the 32nd worst city, Winnipeg was ranked 93rd, and Montreal came in 103rd.

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