Northern Ontario politicians are urgently appealing to the federal government for help during one of the deadliest winters on record along 2,000 kilometres of highway between Nipigon, Sudbury and North Bay.
In a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Northwestern Ontario Municipalities Association (NOMA) is urging the government to designate the stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway — both Highway 11 and Highway 17 — as dual-use national infrastructure.
That would tap into the federal government’s plan to spend more on defence-related infrastructure while fulfilling a years-old request from northwestern Ontarians to shore up the sole land connector between Eastern and Western Canada.
“We need to get the attention of the federal government to say: listen, we need you to invest,” said Rick Dumas, the mayor of Marathon, Ont., and president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipalities Association (NOMA).
Which is what happens in most provinces that have white outs. I recently took a trip back to Saskatoon just after the big storm that hit in Feb and it was brutal. Coming back was even worse as I hit a white out starting in Portage la Prairie. All we could do was turn on our hazard lights and hope for the best.
And only 1 lane each way on that fully-twinned highway was open.