Ford government says it will ban speed cameras across Ontario

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Thursday morning that his government will soon table legislation to ban the use of speed cameras — a traffic enforcement tool Ford has called an ineffective “tax grab.”

“Over the last few years, we’ve seen municipalities across the province use municipal speed cameras as nothing more than a cash grab,” he said at a news conference in Vaughan Thursday morning.

Ford said speed cameras don’t slow people down, and the province plans to establish a new provincial fund to help municipalities put in place other “proactive traffic-calming initiatives that stop people from speeding in the first place,” Ford said. That includes speed bumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks and curb extensions.

CBC Toronto is carrying the live news conference in this story now.

His stance is in opposition to police forces and municipalities that say evidence shows cameras effectively reduce speed and increase road safety.

The Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and the mayor of Toronto all said this month that they support speed cameras.

The police chiefs’ association previously said in a statement that using automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras “has been proven to reduce speeding, change driver behaviour, and make our roads safer for everyone — drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and especially children and other vulnerable road users.”

That statement followed a study from SickKids this summer that found ASE cameras had cut speeding around Toronto schools nearly in half.

Mayor Olivia Chow is also set to introduce recommendations to strengthen Toronto’s ASE program at a city committee Thursday, according to a news release from her office. Among other things, the motion will ask the province to “provide their road safety rationale, and data, for removing ASE cameras.” 

Ford and his government also weren’t always opposed to these cameras.

While it was Toronto that first asked for speed cameras back in 2016, and former premier Kathleen Wynne who made changes to the Highway Traffic Act a year later to allow for their use in school and community zones, it was the Ford government that passed enabling regulations in December of 2019 that allowed municipalities to run such programs.