Doug Ford’s government picked a route for Highway 413 its own experts said would ‘undermine the credibility’ of the project. Local residents are baffled

The province’s decision had two significant outcomes. First, it stopped the four- to six-lane highway running through a future development project in North Kleinburg.

Secondly, it meant the proposed highway would now run into the protected Nashville Conservation Reserve, cutting into the last contiguous Greenbelt forest in Vaughan and across the headwaters of the Humber River, according to internal documents from the Ministry of Transportation (MTO).

“Wildlife will be affected, the environment will be destroyed, and God knows what it’s going to do to the watershed,” said Vaughan resident Michael DiMuccio, who lives near the 900-hectare reserve near Kirby and Huntington Roads.

“How can the government possibly insist on pushing through the most environmentally sensitive area and think they can get away with it?” he added.

The proposed highway connecting Halton to York Region cutting across Brampton, Caledon and Vaughan has become a key part of Doug Ford’s election platform. The province believes the road is needed to meet the region’s transportation demands as the population grows.

But the project, estimated at between $6 billion and $10 billion, has faced widespread opposition from residents, politicians and municipalities concerned about the province’s efforts to expedite the environmental approval process for a project that is expected to cause extensive ecological damage along its path.

The documents shared with the Star include presentations and the minutes of two meetings in May 2020 between MTO officials, GTA West consultants with Aecom and WSP consulting, and “key stakeholders” as they worked to choose a final route for the highway.

Marilyn Iafrate, a Vaughan councillor, filed the access to information request with MTO, and hundreds of pages of results were shared exclusively with the Star.

Iafrate said she filed the access to information request to determine why the province decided to raze hundreds of hectares of conservation lands in her ward.

“Nothing sits right with me on this whole thing,” she said. “How do you make a decision to go through a conservation reserve?”

Critics of the project say the classified documents give insight into the opaque decision-making on the controversial highway project.

“The larger question here is, what or who is informing these choices the government is making?” said Mark Winfield, a York University professor in the faculty of environmental and urban change. “And it begs the question: are these decisions being thought through, or is this being done to accommodate particular interests that have connections to the government?”

Mike Fenn, spokesperson with MTO said the project is currently in the environmental assessment and preliminary design stage, which legally requires consultations with “stakeholders.”

“Based on these consultations, the engineering consultant and ministry technical staff identified an initial proposed route for the entirety of the project,” he said. But after concerns were raised by local municipalities and stakeholders, the “project team were legally obligated to examine other routes in an effort to mitigate those and any environmental … and constructability concerns to the highest degree possible.”

Dakota Brasier, communications adviser for Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney, said “this was a routine technical process conducted by ministry officials and engineering experts, which neither the minister nor anyone in her office had any involvement in.”

The 413 project currently remains gridlocked. The federal government has designated it for a Federal Impact Assessment, and the Transportation Ministry is preparing an initial project description, which will be used to assess if an impact assessment is required.

In the documents obtained by the Star, the GTA West consultants said they had a “technically preferred route” that was better from both an environmental and cost perspective. The route, which they labelled S8-3, impacted less Greenbelt land, would run across a more “stable” part of the Humber River and would be cheaper to build. It also had the lowest impact on fish and wildlife habitat.

But it would cut a 170-metre wide path through a potential subdivision further south of Kirby Road, in the prestigious community of Kleinburg.

The consultants said the purpose of the May meetings was to discuss two new options after Vaughan and York officials asked the province to “consider” reducing impacts on the Kleinburg development.

The consultants presented the new options, but stressed that neither route was supported by provincial land use policy, particularly because they would “maximize incursions into the Greenbelt.” They also said the options would “undermine the credibility of the entire route selection process and GTA West Corridor.”

The province chose one of them anyway.

Two months later, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) presented a detailed comparison of the three possible routes, finding that the route the province ultimately chose, S8-5, had significant issues, including: its impact on about 500 metres of the Humber River; it was located on the largest flood plain; it would impact a higher number of species at risk and it would destroy a recently restored trail system in the Nashville Conservation Reserve.

The TRCA said that the original route, S8-3, “appears to have the fewest impacts … and is preferred,” but given the “competing interests,” it suggested “that MTO advance the studies for these segments such that a true cost comparison is completed and factored into the preferred solution.”

It’s unclear if that ever happened.

In August, a month after the conservation authority submitted its report, the province announced it had opted for the route that its consultants and TRCA had not endorsed.

Vaughan resident Irene Ford, who’s helped organize grassroots opposition to the 413, said she was surprised to see the final route was different than the one shared with residents at a public session in the fall of 2019.

“When they released the final route in 2020, none of us had seen this part of the route before,” she said. “It’s unclear to me if they ever consulted with the public.”

Vaughan resident DiMuccio said Highway 413, “never made any sense to me” and “now decisions are being made that no one can really reasonably explain.”

Iafrate who ran for the provincial Liberals in 2018 said the province didn’t listen to the city of Vaughan, including requests to avoid the Greenbelt lands and ensure there would be little impact to communities.

“It’s a classic government thing: ‘oh, we consulted and we made a decision based on everybody’s feedback.’ But you didn’t take anybody’s feedback,” she said. “When you don’t do that, that means you have predetermined the outcome.”

She concedes city council did not support the preferred route, but she says it also did not support the one that was ultimately selected. The city of Vaughan pulled its support for the highway last year.

According to records, the land for the Kleinburg development, called the North-Kleinburg-Nashville Secondary Plan, is owned by five different landowners — some of whom have held the land for a number of years.

One parcel of land, which would have likely been paved if the preferred route had been picked, was put up for sale shortly after the final route was announced. In the sales listing, its closeness to the 413 is listed as a selling feature: “The Preferred Route for the GTA West Corridor was released in August 2020 and does not include the Site. The site will benefit from the proximity of the highway once completed.”

According to records, the land was sold to Argo Kleinburg Ltd. in January 2021, after the 413 route was picked, for $112 million, significantly more than the $75 million it was purchased for in 2018. Argo Developments was one of eight developers found to own sizable land along the route of the 413, according to a Star investigation from last year.

Earlier this year, the developers submitted an initial subdivision plan to the city of Vaughan for 1,000 single detached and townhomes on the land.

None of the developers responded to requests for comment, or answered questions about whether they had any direct conversations with provincial officials about changing the route to avoid their lands.

“If you are in a position where you’ve got good access, the land value will go way way up,” said York’s Winfield. “If you are a speculator, owning land along the route of a highway is going to be fairly advantageous — especially if you are close to an on or off ramp.”

Winfield said without a fully transparent route selection process, it’s hard not speculate about how the decision was made.

“There’s a reason why this land was put into the Greenbelt. There is a reason why this area was put into a Conservation Reserve,” said Winfield. “They aren’t areas you build a highway on.”