When Will Highway 1 Through Northwestern Ontario Be Fixed?

  

It has been a grim start to 2026 on the roads and highways of Northwestern Ontario with 11 deaths recorded so far,aggravated in part by the harsh winter conditions we have experienced this year.  This has once again prompted regional leaders to call for improvements to the 11 and 17 highway corridors with either more four-laning or a two plus one system (a three-lane highway configuration where the middle lane changes direction every two to five kilometres for passing).  The bottleneck at the Nipigon bridge is especially problematic given that both highways converge at that point.  Of course, the stretch between Nipigon and Shabaqua has gradually been widened to four lanes in spots, but the process has been underway for over twenty years, and substantial portions remain to be completed. 

On top of that, the amount of traffic has increased substantially particularly with respect to transport trucks.  The increase in traffic comes with demographic changes as older drivers have been retiring and it seems there is a plethora of new drivers with a lot less experience driving two lane highways.  Traffic is only going to increase given that east-west traffic appears to have increased in the wake of American tariffs and to that can be added a future where nuclear waste shipments will be trucked to Ignace which is going to be the designated nuclear waste repository for all of Canada.

Of course, the call for highway improvements in the region has been as ubiquitous and lonely as the haunting calls of the loon.  Annual meetings of NOMA and other regional gatherings invariably issue a call for highway improvements with the case for what is perceived by many in the region to be a piece of critical national infrastructure falling on deaf ears. And there have been opinion pieces and reports often in national venues making the case for an improved national highway system through northern Ontario but again they seem to have been only of limited impact.  Even the Rosehart Report in 2008 noted that “For at least three decades, the residents of Northwestern Ontario have requested four-laning of the main highway from the Manitoba border to Southern Ontario (Highway 17)” which means that really this has been going on for half a century and yet here we are.

Northwestern Ontario is a vital zone of transit between the east and west of Canada and the case can certainly be made that as part of a resilient national economy and defense strategy, the highways through the region need to be improved.  There is even a case for an extension of Highway 11 over the top of Lake Nipigon to provide as second east-west route independent of the bottleneck at Nipigon.  However, the case for public safety is also an important one and for that one needs top look at the historical record of road and traffic fatalities in Ontario over time as well as a comparison of Northwestern Ontario with the rest of the province.

Figure 1 plots the number of persons injured and persons killed per 100,000 population for all of Ontario from 1931 to 2024 using data obtained from Ontario Road Safety Annual Reports – which incidentally are only preliminary after 2022 and do not offer as detailed a look as previous reports. Nevertheless, the chart shows that there used to be a time when Ontario was smaller in population and yet highway and road carnage was rather high.   

 

Road deaths per 100,000 population were 17 per 100,000 in 1931 and trended upwards to peak in the early 1970s at 24 deaths per 100,000 population.  They then trended downwards because of improvements in automobile safety as well as the passage of seat belt laws in 1976 and 2006.  Despite the increase in Ontario population and higher urban and road use densities, by 2012, motor vehicle deaths per 100,00 population in Ontario bottomed out at about 4 per 100,000 and have remained stable since.

 

Compare now Northwestern Ontario statistics for Kenora, Rainy River and Thunder Bay districts over the last decade with Ontario.  Figure 2 plots motor vehicle collision deaths per 100,000 population for Northwestern Ontario versus Ontario from 2015 to 2024.  The average for the 2015 to 2024 period is 11.3 deaths per 100,000 for Northwestern Ontario versus 4 deaths per 100,000 for Ontario as a whole.  Moreover, while the Ontario numbers have remained largely stable over the period, the ones in Northwestern Ontario exhibit a distinct upward trend when a linear fit is applied.  In other words, things are getting worse. 

 

The deaths in Northwestern Ontario over the 2015 to 2024 period have ranged from a low of 7.8 deaths per 100,000 population in 2016 to a high of 13.8 in 2021.  As for 2026, if deaths continue at the current rate, there could well be 40 deaths this year or about 16 per 100,000 population.  Going back in time for Ontario, the last time there were approximately 16 traffic collision deaths per 100,000 population in Ontario was 1981 – that was nearly half a century ago. Or if you like, Northwestern Ontario road and highway death rates in 2026 will be akin to Ontario in the 1930s. 

So again, we again ask the question.  When will Highway No. 1 through Northwestern Ontario be fixed?  Will we have an answer before 2076?

The Perils of Northwestern Ontario Roads

 

The holiday season has seen a spate of accidents on the highways of northwestern Ontario - seven between December 29^th and January 6^th according to stories reported on TBnewswatch.  This has resulted in a number of deaths and highway closures as well as an outage of service for TbayTel with numerous customers losing phone, internet and television service.  Indeed, since mid-December at least five people have been killed in highway collisions in the region across ten major accidents. Indeed, according to a CBC report, 34 people were killed on northwestern Ontario roads in 2022.  This has made road safety a major issue and it has been exacerbated by what appear to be an increasing number of collisions involving transport trucks. Collisions involving transport trucks on area highways appear to have grown from 13.4 percent of the total in 2016 to 21.3 percent in 2021.

 

Of course, whether or not it is more dangerous to drive in northwestern Ontario relative to the rest of the province invariably requires not absolute numbers, but relative comparisons based on rates of fatalities that are population adjusted.  For example, using data from  Ontario Road Safety Annual Reports,  in 2022, Ontario as a whole had  592 fatalities on its roads while northwestern Ontario had 34. However, while northwestern Ontario accounts for 1.5 percent of Ontario’s population, it accounted for over 6 percent of its persons killed in collisions in 2022 based on these numbers.

 

The trend is even more stark if one plots these road deaths per 100,000 population constructed from data available since 2015 from the Safety Reports combined with population data for Ontario and the northwest.  It should be noted that the 2021 and 2022 reports are still preliminary and therefore do not include the official regional numbers.  While there are numbers for Ontario as a whole for those two years, the rate per 100,000 was also estimated using population figures for those years.  Thus, 2021 and 2022 for northwestern Ontario and Ontario are “estimates” based on Ontario population, the reported total by CBC for 2022 and a calculation for 2021 done based on the average from 2015 to 2022 of northwestern Ontario to Ontario fatalities.

 

 

 

The results show that when done per 100,000 population there are substantially more deaths on northwestern Ontario roadways than Ontario as a whole.  From 2015 to 2022, average fatalities per 100,000 population were 8.7 for the northwest while for Ontario as a whole they were 4.0.  In other words, the roadways of the northwest are twice as deadly compared to the Ontario average.  And, while Ontario appears stable over this time period, one could argue that the northwest is seeing an overall upward trend.  Is this a problem? I would think so.  The roads of the northwest – in particular its highways - are not just regional roads but national conduits for travel and commerce.  This is a provincial problem with local and national implications given the number of lives being lost.  Drivers beware.

Resolute Responds

Today’s Chronicle Journal had a one-page ad by Resolute Forest Products written in response to a Chronicle Journal editorial on July 18^th entitled “Innovation But When”.   In the response, Resolute maintains that the editorial implies that there has been no capital investment or pro-active action taken by any Canadian or North American company relative to the forest products industry.  Resolute then proceeds to list the major capital projects it has recently announced: a 54 million dollar investment for improvements to a wood waste boiler and steam turbine installation at the Resolute Thunder Bay mill, an 8 million dollar upgrade of its sawmill complex, a 30 million dollar investment in the idled Ignace mill and another 20 million dollars at the newsprint mill in Iroquois Falls.

Resolute is justifiably miffed at being lumped in with a large chunk of the forest industry that did not invest sufficiently in its mills and met the perfect economic forestry storm of the early 21^st century with aging infrastructure and equipment. Resolute is indeed an example of a proactive and engaged forest products company and its investments are key to the survival and prosperity of the forest products industry in Thunder Bay and the Northwest.  There is also its relationship with CRIBE (Centre for Research and Innovation in the Bio-Economy) and FP Innovations, which will look at innovative ways of using forest biomass.

In Thunder Bay, Resolute is the only survivor of that economic storm with a mill complex that dates back to the 1920s.  The Resolute mill is the latest corporate incarnation of the Great Lakes Paper Company, which over time has been Great Lakes Forest Products, Canadian Pacific Forest Products, Avenor, and Abitibi-Bowater. A hallmark of the original Great Lakes Paper was that it was locally owned and an example of local Lakehead entrepreneurship.  Having our own locally owned head office meant substantial control over investment decisions and white-collar employment that deepened our local labour and professional opportunities.  Indeed, the fact that this is the only pulp mill that ultimately survived out of the four mills in Thunder Bay is a testament to the original good decision making in plant and equipment that made the company viable for resale and continued production in the long run.

Resolute is also correct in maintaining that it had to deal with economic events largely out of its control such as the appreciation of the Canadian dollar or the decline in demand for newsprint driven by the technological change of the computer age.  Indeed, taking out a one-page newspaper ad is a wonderful example of supplier- induced demand. However, Resolute has developed a selective historical memory and conveniently omits the effect of provincial government policies on the forest sector crisis.  Indeed, it was not too long ago that the North cried out in protest against provincial wood allocation and electricity price policies.  Moreover, there was the exceedingly slow response of the provincial government in realizing the extent of the crisis and finally offering some relief in areas such as electricity prices. 

Finally, it should be noted that even active management and being proactive cannot always save you from the realities of the market especially when combined with slow or ineffective government policy assistance or indeed detrimental trade policies such as the softwood lumber dispute.  Witness what has happened to the Buchanan mills even with all their energetic responses and efforts.  It is an important lesson we should not forget.

Planning for the Boom

The talk of booms and rumours of booms continues in Northwestern Ontario and with good reason given the ramping up of mining activity.  Along with several mines currently in production, there are a number of planned projects. Cliffs Chromite Project in the Ring of Fire is about to undergo an environmental assessment.  Thunder Bay is currently the host to some 26 exploration companies with projects expected to produce gold over the next 3-5 years at Greenstone (Hard Rock), Atikokan (Hammond Reef), Pickle Lake (PC Gold Inc.) as well as several other places.  As well, Stillwater is planning to develop a copper project near Marathon. 

All this activity is generating exploration and supply work but the mining boom is not here yet.  Nonetheless, area governments are beginning “to plan” for the development that is underway and yet to come.  Atikokan apparently has commissioned a community readiness study that among other things argues that six major projects in the area will lead to substantial construction activity, home building and potentially a doubling of the population.  Thunder Bay is apparently also undertaking  a Mining Readiness Strategy that will attempt to capitalize on the mining development.

A boom with population growth would be a welcome development in Northwestern Ontario.  This would be a much different region if Thunder Bay had 150,000 people and Nipigon and Atikokan were communities of 20,000 people each.  Yet, it remains to be seen if all of this mining development will come to pass and yield the expected employment and income benefits given the volatility of world commodity prices.  Most of the economic benefits will flow from the prospecting, exploration and setting up the mines as operating mines today are much more capital intensive.

With respect to all the planning being undertaken, the emphasize seems to be entirely short term – that is, how to meet the needs of the anticipated increase in population and demand for housing as well as capitalizing on the mining employment.  A longer view needs to be taken. Three other things these communities need to plan for.  First, making sure that new construction and development creates urban density in communities rather than a short-term build it where you like frontier  mentality.  Second, that some of the resource rents generated from these projects are invested in sovereign wealth funds for both the First Nations and the rest of the region’s residents to serve as a long-term source of income from a non-renewable resource.  Third, there be some thinking devoted to what happens when the mines close.  Is this too much to ask?

What's Up in Kenora?

The release of the 2011 census results for Northwestern Ontario were disappointing given the population declines that were registered.  There is however one curiosity if one goes back to the 2001 Census.  When the three Districts of the Northwest are compared over the period 2001 to 2011, Kenora District is a bit of an anomaly.  Between 2001 and 2006, while the Thunder Bay District and the Rainy District registered population declines, Kenora registered a 4.2 percent increase - or 2,617 more people.  Now, from 2006 to 2011, Kenora shows a bigger decline than either the Thunder Bay or Rainy River district at -10.6 percent or a drop of 6,812 people.  The increase in Kenora District between 2001 and 2006 was attributed in large part to the growing First Nation population and their high birth rates.  So what happened?  Has the birth rate collapsed?  Has a mass out-migration of non-aboriginal population counteracted the growing aboriginal population?  Did the Census somehow not enumerate large numbers of first Nations residents in the outlying reserves this time around?  Hopefully, there will be answers to these questions.

UPDATE: MONDAY FEBRUARY 13TH. Well, it turns out as announced this morning on the CBC Thunder Bay News that Statistics Canada has announced it missed 13 remote First Nations when it conducted the Census and did them in the fall with the updated numbers for Northwestern Ontario to be released soon.  It would have been nice to know this when the numbers were initially released.  After all, it likely means the population of the region as a whole probably did not drop 4.7 percent.  Who knows, maybe it even went up?  Let's hope the government waits for a final tally before reallocating seats in the House of Commons.