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. “People are fed up.”
Despite study findings and the opinion of police associations and municipalities to the contrary, 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.” That includes speed bumps, roundabouts, raised crosswalks and curb extensions.
Ford did not say where money for the fund would come from or how much it would cost.
He said the government will also require municipalities with existing speed cameras in school zones to install large signs with flashing lights to slow down drivers.
Premier Ford called speed cameras an ineffective ‘cash grab,’ while announcing his plan to ban the road safety tools in Ontario Thursday. (Michael Evans/CBC)
His stance is in opposition to police forces and municipalities that say evidence shows cameras effectively reduce speed and increase road safety.
Others say effectiveness of speed cams is proven
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.
WATCH | SickKids head explains how speed cams around schools improve safety: 
How speed cameras make streets safer for kids
A new study by SickKids hospital shows speed cameras make the streets safer for kids. The hospital’s head of orthopedic surgery, Andrew Howard, spoke to CBC’s Metro Morning about the study findings and how they can improve kids’ safety.
Ford said Thursday he respects both SickKids and police, but speed cameras aren’t working, calling the issue “black-and-white.”
In Ottawa, speeding compliance in zones with speed cameras increased from 16 per cent to 81 per cent three years after cameras were installed, according to the city’s website.
Mayor Olivia Chow is 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 said Thursday only 37 of the province’s 444 municipalities support the cameras.
Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca, whose city just ended the use of speed cameras despite an internal study that found cameras reduced the number of speeding vehicles in enforcement areas by 56 per cent daily, said ASE was remarkably unpopular with his constituents.
A CAA study this summer found 73 per cent of Ontarians support speed cameras in targeted zones.
Ford and Del Duca both claimed they’d heard of drivers getting fined multiple times for going only a few kilometres per hour over the speed limit through camera zones.
Ford and his government 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.