I’m very glad to see the word “nearly” in that sentence.
Yep. My faithful car developed a problem right before I planned to drive to a friend’s place in Burlington to watch the eclipse back in April, so I took it to the shop and rented a car. Almost as an incidental, I told the rental guy that I was going to take the 407, and he said no problem, we just bill your credit card later.
When I got the credit card statement I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! The total cost of the 407 tolls in both directions was more – much more – than the cost of the car rental itself!
Doug Ford has said he’s going to remove tolls from parts of the 407, presumably meaning he’s going to buy back some sections of the highway from the profiteering scammers. But it probably won’t amount to much. The whole original point of selling out to private enterprise (I think it was the corrupt Harris government that did this) was to claw back the staggeringly high cost of that highway and shift the burden to motorists. It was never originally intended to be anything but another free public highway.
The portion he’s talking about is the extension in the east known as the 407 rather than 407ETR. This was built after the sale of the ETR and was always provincially owned.
Thanks for that. So, IOW, Ford was lying!
But at least in PP’s case, he’ll deserve it.
I have a question for Canadians, a foolish one anyway. I was watching the show Neighborhood Wars and a crazy woman was going off on a guy because he had parked in the street in front of her house.
Here in the US it’s legal to do that, as long as the driveway is not blocked. This clip was from somewhere in Ontario though. So what are the customs in Canada? Do they vary from province to province?
It varies from province to province. Generally, in Ontario, street parking is three hours max, unless you have a permit where one is required, when you can park for longer. Many Toronto houses, for example, have no driveways, garages, or alleys, so you have no choice but to park on the street, preferably in front of your house. Permit parking is common there, in such neighbourhoods. I can easily see somebody in such a neighbourhood being upset that someone had taken what they regard as “their” parking spot.
Alberta, on the other hand, has no such rules, and it is common for somebody to get their travel trailer out of winter storage, and park it on the street from April to October. It’s gone for two weeks in August, but in the meantime, it makes a handy place for visitors to stay when they visit. Regardless, this would be totally illegal in Ontario.
Blocking a driveway in both places is illegal in any event. Once or twice, my neighbour has had guests who have blocked my driveway. I just drove over his lawn to get out. Happy ending: we laughed about it later, and he promised to let his guests know that they were to watch out for my driveway when they parked. He did, and they did, and it’s all good.
Is this really a province wide rule, and not simply zoned parking? Any dense inner city street in Calgary will be permit parking, but suburbia is free range. Isn’t that the same in Ontario? Plenty of as smaller cities and towns in Ontario where I would not think this would be necessary.
I have seen many things online of Americans getting pissed off about someone parking in front of their house. It’s a universal thing, no matter what the rules are.
No, what he said was true. They plan to not have tolls on part of the 407. I believe they also removed the tolls on the connecting 412 and 418.
Inch for inch I think the 407 is probably the most expensive toll highway on the continent. I have to use it for work from time to time and it’s ghastly.
If I were to cross the border at Buffalo and take the New York State thruway ACROSS THE ENTIRE STATE OF NEW YORK to New York City, a distance of some 550 KM, it’d still cost me far less than taking the length of the 407, a distance of 100 KM. It’s appalling.
Adding to the cost of this is the fact the 407 is underused. Go ahead, drive it at peak times; it’s remarkably clear, because it’s so expensive. That means a lot of that traffic is on the 401 and other highways, which fucks up traffic, which costs money. A lot of money.
Toronto’s approach to transportation is a godawful mess. It might actually have the worst traffic of any big city in North America, and trust me, I have driven in all of them. The transit, especially at a regional level, is simply not up to snuff. The cost is hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a billion or more.
Yes, it’s pretty much the same, but of course, it’s on point for Toronto to think it’s all of Ontario 
But people sometimes get weird about parking, so this causes neighborhood parking wars.
But some people also need to think more. I had one person living across the street from me, who would often park directly across from my driveway. In summer, it was just an annoyance, but come winter, when the snowbanks reduced the width of the street by a significant amount, it made it almost impossible to back out of my driveway without hitting them. There just wasn’t enough room.
If they’d moved a half-car length either way, there never would have been a problem. But they just never quite figured that out.
Lucky for me, they seemed to have moved out.
I think that’s municipal law, not provincial law? There is a bylaw in Regina that prohibits doing that, but I don’t think it’s province-wide.
Here in London Ontario overnight street parking is forbidden during snow removal months. Isn’t it the same in most snow belt locations? We’ve had three storms this winter that each left 3’ of snow behind, can’t imagine trying to plow the streets with buried parked cars everywhere, yikes!
I just got an automated email notice from the city of Ottawa notifying me of a parking ban from 10AM to 7PM for the next two days to allow for snow clearing for the snowstorm we are currently experiencing. This is the normal thing here, parking bans but only when snowclearing happens. We also get local bans, where a street will have temporary No Parking signs stuck in the snowbanks along a street where the accumulated snow is going to be removed.
In Ottawa, it isn’t automatic. The city announces winter parking bans on specific days, when they expect a significant snowfall. They also put up temporary no parking signs (stuck in the snowbanks) when they plan to send crews to cut back the snowbanks.
ETA: Looks like I should have read one post more!
ETA2: We also adjust the parking a bit in the winter. One place I go every sunday has street parking on both sides during the summer, but only on one side in the winter. They used to actually turn all the signs around, they were double-sided. The last few years, though, they just have the one sign that explains it.
How likely is it that Canadian corporations and CEOs actually care much about the nation and Canadian sovereignty? Sure, when it suits them for marketing purposes, they’ll slap a maple leaf on their product and pay someone to shout “I am Canadian!” But they sell resources and their own companies to US and other corporations without hesitating when the price is right.
Do these sorta Canadian companies have better records in labour relations, environmental protection, relations with Indigenous people, or anything else we might think represents Canadian values? Galen Weston is Canadian, but his companies fixed the price of bread, avoided taxes, replaced employees with scanning machines, opposed rises in minimum wages, and are undermining universal health care.
This is not new, of course. Many of the fathers of confederation became Canadian patriots only when free trade with the US was no longer an option. Before that, they were keen to work closely with the US, and at least one historian (Peter Waite) concluded they would have been happy to continue to do so even though it would likely have led to union with the US. The CPR was built where it was so the corporation could connect with its US branches; it was always more interested in the US market than “building the Canadian nation.”
All of this is to say it may make more sense to look at Canadian businesses as businesses, period. They follow the money, not culture and communities, when they make their decisions.
As they expand and integrate into world markets, the “Canadian identity” they used to establish themselves becomes a detriment. Look at Canadian banks: they have rebranded themselves to take the “Canada” out of their names: BMO and CIBC have replaced Bank of Montreal and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
The sad part is, this was all talked about in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, in royal commissions, political party platforms, and more. But the warnings were ignored and political parties, led by the Conservatives and Reform etc. moved aggressively to quash any movement to ensure a real Canadian economy and culture might emerge.
Apologies for the length of this rant. Where’s the Waffle when you need it?
Even Calgary has ‘snow routes’ now where parking is not allowed during heavy snow events. Its laughable compared to real Ontario snow belt.
I recall no effort to “Quash” Canadian culture.
Cultural protection requires economic protection. By calling for the removal of economic protections, from the NEP to Can-Con to the CBC to health care to pensions to foreign investment review and much more, Reform and its descendants made it much more difficult for Canada to protect culture and community. Of course they wrapped themselves in the flag when they did this, but that was about marketing, not commitment.
Other parties were not much better, but Reform et al. shifted the Overton Window.
I cannot disagree more. Having trade agreements doesn’t prevent Canadians from having culture. We are a sufficiently confident and vibrant nation to do that.
Indeed, my perception is that our self identity has gotten stronger over the last forty years.