Drivers in Ontario illegally pass stopped school buses an estimated 15,000 times a day, putting children at risk every time a bus is passed. Ontario has allowed municipalities to use automated stop-arm cameras since 2020, but adoption remains rare because most municipalities lack the capacity to process and adjudicate the offences. The cameras exist and the legislation exists. What is missing is a system to put them to work. Good Roads is calling on the province to help municipalities close this gap through direct funding, a provincial processing centre, or other solutions that keep children safe on their way to and from school.

Ontario faces a $44.34 billion municipal infrastructure backlog, and small and medium municipalities often cannot access capital markets efficiently on their own. Good Roads has designed the Ontario Municipal Finance Corporation, a non-profit lender that would pool municipal borrowing and issue bonds to institutional investors, giving smaller municipalities capital at below-market rates. A modest provincial investment of $76.1 million over 30 years would unlock $500 million in private capital, a 6.57 times multiplier. Proven models such as British Columbia’s Municipal Finance Authority show the approach works. The result is more infrastructure built sooner, without placing the full burden on property taxpayers.

The operators who keep Ontario’s roads passable during major storms increasingly face harassment, interference, and even threats of violence. Municipal public works professionals do not benefit from the same clearly defined protections afforded to some other frontline workers. Good Roads supports the measures proposed by the Association of Ontario Road Supervisors: stronger protections during declared Significant Weather Events, public-safety interference provisions modelled on Ontario’s Slow Down, Move Over legislation, and minimum following-distance requirements behind snowplows. When operators are forced off the job, roads go uncleared and emergency response suffers, so protecting these workers protects entire communities.

In August 2026, Ontario filed O. Reg. 283/26: STANDARDS FOR ROAD DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION, making 61 provincial standards for municipal road construction mandatory for projects procured on or after July 1, 2027. Harmonization could deliver an estimated $4.17 billion in savings over ten years, but it also carries real risks, particularly for rural and remote municipalities where costs could rise or road quality could fall. The standards are fixed to dated versions with no clear mechanism to keep them current, and municipalities must file annual compliance reports and request exemptions one project at a time. Good Roads is working to ensure harmonization delivers real savings without leaving smaller municipalities behind.

Highways 11 and 17 are the weak links in Canada’s national highway system, the only stretches of the Trans-Canada that remain two lanes for long distances. They are also the sole land route connecting eastern and western Canada without crossing into the United States, making them vital to interprovincial trade, national unity, and defence readiness. For Northern Ontarians, they are daily lifelines to work, medical care, and emergency services. Good Roads is calling for a strategic mix of four-lane twinning and 2+1 highways, backed by a federal investment of $3 to $5 billion over ten years, to modernize these corridors as dual-use infrastructure.

Rural roads are Ontario’s most dangerous. Home to just 13.3 per cent of the province’s population, rural Ontario accounts for 61 per cent of traffic fatalities on municipal roads. Many rural, northern, and remote municipalities maintain vast road networks on a small tax base, leaving those roads older, in poorer condition, and equipped with only basic safety infrastructure. Good Roads is training certified Road Safety Auditors and advocating for a provincial framework that helps rural municipalities target accident hot spots, upgrade to modern safety standards, and act on audit findings to make their roads safer.

Visit the list of current Certified Road Safety auditors in Ontario: https://goodroads.ca/certified-road-safety-auditors/