A Sustainable Transportation System for Ontario
Contents |
Introduction
Ontario’s transportation sector has a substantial impact on the province’s natural environment. The road network, including its demands for aggregates and salt, leaves a major footprint on the landscape, resulting in altered and degraded waterways and fragmented ecosystems. Vehicles on the road network contribute about a quarter of all greenhouse gases emitted in the province and a large amount of the emissions that lead to smog. Ontario’s transportation system has been evolving in this unsustainable direction for decades, and yet the big decisions on transportation remain largely screened from public debate. The ECO feels that these points cannot be separated: the transportation network will not become more sustainable without more openness and public input in decision-making.
It’s also clear that many Ontarians would like to see the transportation network become more environmentally sustainable. For example, two separate EBR applications were filed with the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, one in 2003 and the other in 2004, requesting that the Ministry of Transportation become subject to more review under the EBR (see also Prescribing MTO: More Scrutiny of Ontario’s Planes, Trains and Automobiles). The ECO welcomes the response of the Ministry of the Environment on this issue – MOE has told the ECO that the ministry is planning to revise its EBR regulation to make MTO subject to EBR reviews.
Need for greater public scrutiny of MTO decision-making
The ECO has been pointing out for some time the need for greater public scrutiny of MTO decision-making. The ECO’s 2000/2001 annual report highlighted the poor transparency of long-term regional transportation planning exercises, as well as the de facto decision-making vacuum in which transportation planning is carried out for the Greater Toronto Area. In more recent annual reports, the ECO has commented on weak public consultation on individual highway projects, and on the excessive environmental damage caused by highway construction.
The ECO has also written about the prodigious quantities of sand and gravel used in road construction, the environmental impacts of extracting those materials, and the need for improved management of road salt.
Ontario’s transportation policy-making requires an informed public debate within a very broad context. An appropriate level of debate would allow the public to consider, for example, the implications of peak oil (the point at which world-wide oil production ceases to rise), the need to slash greenhouse gases and the smog-causing emissions of vehicles, as well as the need to adapt future infrastructure designs to meet the challenges of a changing climate.
Lack of public scrutiny of Ministry of Finance decisions
The spending priorities and taxation policies of the province with respect to transportation deserve to be a key part of this debate. The Ministry of Finance implements government decisions large and small that have an impact on transportation in Ontario. In some cases, the ministry’s decisions could have provided significantly greater environmental benefits had there been greater public input and more consideration of environmental perspectives when the decisions were being made.
Tax for Fuel Conservation (TFFC)
For example, since 1991 the Ministry of Finance has administered the Tax for Fuel Conservation (TFFC), often called the “gas guzzler tax” (see below for details), yet the program has never been subject to consultation through the Environmental Registry, because MOF has not been prescribed under the EBR since 1995. Critics of the program claim that the incentives and disincentives offered by TFFC’s taxes and rebates are not strong enough to substantially alter consumer attitudes toward fuel-efficient vehicles.
MOF allocation of funds for transit
MOF’s decisions about the allocation of funds for highways and transit in the 2005 Ontario budget will have major consequences for Ontario’s transportation system. The 2005/2006 planned gross capital investment in transportation initiatives was about 1 billion, 750 million dollars, of which about 500 million dollars will go to transit. But since MOF is not subject to the EBR’s many provisions that allow the public to take part in environmental decision-making, there were no EBR consultations, nor was there consideration of a ministry Statement of Environmental Values before or after this spending decision was made. And in fact, even if this funding flows to ministries that are prescribed under the EBR, such as the Ministries of Transportation or Municipal Affairs and Housing, the funded projects might undergo at best only limited EBR scrutiny. The Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal is a key ministry that will be involved in transportation spending, but it too is not subject to the EBR. (MPIR has indicated a willingness to become EBR-prescribed, but is not yet, as of early 2006.)
The Ontario government’s decision to spend money on transit is positive, but the decision might have been stronger if both MOF and MPIR were prescribed under the EBR and subject to increased transparency and review by the ECO. As it is, there is no way for the ECO or the public to know if environmental perspectives, such as those that might come from the consideration of a ministry’s [[Statement of Environmental Values]], were taken into account when this decision was made.
MOF dedication of part of gas tax revenue to public transit
Another recent (2004) and significant budgetary development relates to the dedication of a portion of the provincial gasoline tax revenue to public transit. Many public policy observers see this as a step in the direction of environmental sustainability – that is, charging a fee to a consumer of a private good (the automobile) that is generally more energy-, land- and pollution-intensive than transit, and using the revenues from the fee to support a public good (transit) that has the potential to be much less energy-, land- and pollution-intensive. The value of this measure over three years could be nearly $700 million. This is an example of a decision for which the Ontario government might have received supportive responses from the public, but the decision was also never subject to consultation through the Environmental Registry.
MOF relieved of EBR obligations in 1995
Important MOF decisions do not receive any form of consultation under the EBR because MOF was relieved of its EBR obligations in 1995. That year, a regulation removed the requirement that MOF post policy proposals on the Environmental Registry if “implementation of the proposal would result in the elimination, reduction or realignment of an expenditure of the Government of Ontario.” At the time, the ECO issued a special report in which it expressed disappointment in the government’s action. Since that time, members of the public have applied to re-prescribe the Ministry of Finance, but to no avail. It is little wonder that residents of Ontario have felt frustrated in their attempts to advance more environmentally sustainable transportation practices in the province.
The ECO notes that in the early 1990s, there was an effort to make Ontario’s transportation system more diversified and environmentally sustainable. For example, at that time, MAH produced a 107-page document called “Transit-Supportive Land Use Planning Guidelines,” which was to be used to guide urban and suburban development. Also in 1994, an organization called the Ontario Round Table on Environment and Economy brought together a team of people knowledgeable about transportation from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors with the aim of devising a strategy to make Ontario’s transportation system less emission-intensive.
ECO Comment
The ECO looks forward to opportunities for residents to make formal applications under the EBR for reviews of the Ministry of Transportation’s policies, Acts and regulations. The ECO feels strongly that transportation impacts like air and road salt emissions, land and aggregate consumption, and ecosystem disruption deserve stricter environmental control.
The Ministry of Finance’s Tax for Fuel Conservation could become a useful program from an environmental perspective. The gas tax allotment for transit is also a sensible start, as is more provincial and federal spending on transit. But in order to ensure that these initiatives are effective and that the public is engaged in the undertakings, members of the public need to be consulted at the outset – when both large and small decisions are being made. Getting buy-in from the public helps to ensure program effectiveness. The ECO believes that the removal of a variety of lingering obstacles to public participation in transportation decision-making in Ontario would lead to more lasting and sustainable solutions. At the same time, incorporating environmental principles and perspectives into transportation decision-making would reduce this sector’s ecological footprint.
| Recommendation 4:
The ECO recommends that MTO take the lead with MAH and MOE and collaborate on a strategy to reduce the environmental impact of the transportation sector in Ontario, hold public consultations on the strategy, and post the strategy on the Environmental Registry. |
| This is an article from the 2005/06 Annual Report to the Legislature from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. |
Citing This Article:
Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 2006. "A Sustainable Transportation System for Ontario: MOE and MTO Remove One Roadblock, But Others Remain." Neglecting our Obligations, ECO Annual Report, 2005-06. Toronto, ON : Environmental Commissioner of Ontario. 44-48.
