NDP Leader Marit Stiles focuses on northern Ontario highways

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles reiterated her pledge on Saturday to make northern Ontario highways safer, promising to widen some highways and end private highway maintenance contracts.

Her announcement in Thunder Bay came after all four of the province’s main party leaders clashed in their first debate on Friday in North Bay, Ont., held specifically to discuss northern issues such as infrastructure, road safety and an addictions crisis that has hit many communities hard.

“Nobody relies on highways as much as the people in northern Ontario,” Stiles said at an education centre. “It is crucial to be getting anywhere, and, frankly, crucial to be able to do just daily things.”

“Everybody deserves a safe and well-maintained highway,” she added.

Stiles promised earlier this week that if her party forms government, they will widen Highway 11/17 and Highway 69 in northern Ontario and bring snow clearance and highway maintenance back under public control.

She has also vowed to upload the responsibility for some municipal roadways back to the province, increase training for truck drivers and fast-track passenger train projects in the north.

Stiles did not provide an exact timeline for the projects, but vowed to start them within the first 100 days of her term should she become premier. She also did not provide a cost estimate of her commitments, but said the province “can’t afford not to do this.”

Elsewhere, Green Leader Mike Schreiner made campaign stops in Huntsville and Gravenhurst Saturday. Schreiner reiterated his party’s vow to increase per-student funding, reduce class sizes and fix the province’s school repair backlog.

Neither Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford nor Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie had public events scheduled, but both parties spent time digging up information on each others’ candidates.

A Saturday press release from the PCs unearthed a 2012 social media post from Liberal Ottawa-Centre candidate Thomas Simpson in which the party said he posted: “Consent is not sexy #success.”

The PC Party called the post “offensive” and “a slap in the face to survivors of sexual violence.”

“Doug Ford must be pretty desperate if he is digging up social media posts from more than a decade ago,” said Liberal press secretary Bahoz Dara Aziz in a written statement.

She provided links to news articles about previous controversial comments by Ford, and offered no indication that the Liberals would be prepared to drop Simpson as a candidate.

The exchange came after the PCs attacked another Liberal candidate on Friday for his past social media posts. The candidate apologized and the party responded similarly, saying the comments were made over a decade ago.

The leaders are set to debate each other again on Monday in Toronto.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2025.

Rianna Lim, The Canadian Press