The Current - Doug Ford hates speed cameras. Do you?

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

After 16 speed cameras were vandalized in one night in Toronto, Ontario's premier says it's time to get rid of the "tax grab" devices. But Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee says they're more needed than ever, as drivers seem to become more reckless.

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Whatever tools they're using, those people, are decapitating the automated roadside ticketing machines. This week in Toronto, 16 cameras have been chopped down in one week alone. The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, is angry, but not necessarily at the damage done. This is nothing but a tax grab. I've driven by speed traps aren't even close to school areas. To put this photo radar and some people driving through a neighborhood and they're five, ten kilometers over, they're getting nailed at a stop fare. So I'm dead against this photo radar that they have.

Premier Ford's remarks prompted this response from Ontario opposition leader, Maritz-Styles. What a idiotic thing to say. I'm sorry. I can't even. Look, we need safer roads. That's what we need. That is not a responsible approach to this issue, right? We have a premier who's putting booze and gas stations, and now he wants to tear down our speed cameras. Politicians aren't the only ones divided over these cameras.

Across this country, people are landing on either side of the speed trap debate. Marcus G. is a columnist for the Globe and Mail. He lives in Toronto, not far away from a park where a speed camera has been chopped down multiple times. Marcus, good morning. Morning. You ever been caught by one of those speed cameras? I have not. My wife told me this morning that she was caught by one nearby our street on Dufferin Street

and got a substantial ticket, but she said, you know what? It made me think twice about how fast I was going. I don't need to prosecute your wife here. I just wonder whether it changed behavior at all in terms of maybe a little bit lighter on the accelerator. Well, exactly. That's what speed cameras are supposed to do. They're usually signs saying, look, this is a speed.

limit speed camera up ahead. So be aware. And a lot of people are getting tickets on this street that you mentioned where cameras are being cut down. And I think a lot of them are slowing down. In fact, the studies are showing that speeds have gone down. The number of accidents have gone down. We have talked about this across the country. And speaking with people in Alberta, speaking with people in Ontario and in eastern Canada. Why do you understand that some drivers hate speed cameras? Not so much that they would just chop them down, but this is one part of urban life that just drives people around the bend.

Yeah, it certainly does. I mean, there's a feeling that, you know, you're being watched by Big Brother, you know, you're dinged by this kind of unseeing, all-seeing eye, and suddenly you get a ticket. that arrives in the mail or whatever. So I think it does feel introduces to people, but it's a standard thing in many countries all around Europe.

I was in Europe this summer, and my GPS is telling me all the time speed cameras coming up. They have them in Scotland, they have them in Germany, they have them in France, they have them in New York City. So it's not, and the whole point is to calm traffic, is to make people think twice about speeding and to reduce the number of pedestrians, deaths, which is quite high in Toronto until a few years ago.

There was a protest in the city of Brampton, just northwest of Toronto this summer over speed cameras. Have a listen to this. This is a Toronto resident name Andrew venting on TikTok about speed cameras. What the what is with these speed cameras? Toronto has now 150 speed cameras throughout the city. I've got seven right by my house. They're not stopping you from hauling ass. They're just hauling in cash. Halling in cash. A little bit bleepy there as well in Andrew's comments. People will say, and the Premier has said, this is just a tax grab. It has nothing to do with slowing people down. It's just a way to make money.

What do you make of that argument? I don't think that's true at all. I mean, the amount that's brought in is a drop in the bucket in Toronto's multi-billion dollar budget. They were brought in by a conservative mayor, John Torrey, several years ago, as part of the city's Toronto's Vision Zero program, which is trying to reduce the number of pedestrian deaths and cyclists' deaths. to zero. And it's part of a whole suite of measures that were brought in school zones with especially marked crosswalks, red light cameras, more stoplights, things like that that are all

brought in, lower speed limits that are all brought in to make our streets not only safer, but a little more pleasant. Suggestion from some people is if you don't want to be taxed like this, just don't speed. I mean, if you don't want to get the ticket, follow the limit. Yeah, it's not very complicated, is it really? I found it kind of outrageous that the thing that the Premier was most outraged about was not that a vandal had cut down all these cameras, 16 of them, you know, as you say, with a chainsaw or something, but that the cameras are there in the first place. So here's a law and order guy who doesn't seem to be bothered at all that somebody's

going around the city defying the law. You have written extensively about life in cities, but all. also, you know, how that interacts with politics. Do you think this is good politics for a Premier, like Mr. Ford saying this is what his constituents want. People don't like these things. And I'm going to figure out a way to get rid of them. It may well be. I mean, this goes back a long way with Doug Ford and his brother Rob, of course, who was mayor. The war on the car. The war on the car is something they talked about. One of the first things that Rob Ford did when he became mayor was pull out of bike lane. Premier Ford also.

So he's pulling out back lanes. He's riding on a very substantial and real feeling, especially among suburban people and cities, that the kind of latte-sipping urban elites are clogging up the roads by putting in bike lanes, by putting in red light cameras, and so on. So he's riding on top of a backlash, which is substantial. And politically, I understand what he's doing it. And yet there are a lot of people who welcome these cameras.

We mentioned this one camera in particular. particular. It's been chopped down seven times. One time somebody chopped it down and dragged it into a pond that was, they broke through the ice and threw it into this pond to make it disappear. I went by this camera on a Friday, like just this past Friday. It was there. On Sunday, the camera was gone. Somebody had taken it down. It's on a busy street, runs along, uh, high park in Toronto. The community that's around this camera wants the camera to stay there. Have a listen to what Faraz Golizada from the neighborhood advocacy group Safe Parkside told our friends it as it happens a few days ago. There have been people that have been killed on the street.

There was one motorist who was going over 120 kilometers per hour, rear-ended another vehicle, killing the two people inside of it. There's been another motorist that was recently caught going 154 kilometers per hour. We don't understand how a city that contends to believe in Vision Zero can be so careless with a street that's seeing what Parkside has seen. So you don't live too far away from there. Do you share the frustration that we just heard? Absolutely. I mean, there were more than 200 crashes a year on that street,

which is one little street before the speed cameras came in. And as he mentioned, there was this double fatality. A motorcyclist was also killed. So it's a dangerous street. It's kind of, although it goes right past a park, it kind of feels like an on-ramp to the highway. It's a straight shot. It's a straight shot.

And so it's very tempting just to boot it, and people do. And so the city quite reasonably has brought in a few changes, speed cameras. It's allowed a little more parking on the street. So it's not a double lane all the way. It's put in a couple more traffic lights as well. So the whole idea is just to warn people to slow down a bit. This is not the highway yet. This is going right through a residential neighborhood.

Be careful. We heard one driver was caught going 154 kilometers an hour on the street. something like 65,000 tickets have been issued from that one area, more than $7 million in fines. The suggestion is that speeds are down in this area and the number of crashes in this area are down as well. If that is the evidence, why aren't more people convinced, do you think? Well, I think, as you say, these things are kind of a red flag. It's unfortunate that it's become that way. I think it's a relatively new thing in Toronto.

We've just doubled the number of speed cameras in the city to 150, but we only had a few until a few years ago. So it's a new thing, but as I say, it's commonplace in New York City. It's commonplace in all over Quebec. It's something you just have to get used to. And eventually it becomes an accepted thing. and you just accept that you have to go a little slower, Betelah. Tell me a little bit about what you saw.

You were in Paris a few months ago. And again, this is a fight. You have counselors in Ottawa who are defending these cameras. We've talked about the fight in Alberta over these sorts of cameras. You mentioned Quebec as well. What did you see in Paris when it came to the traffic transformation there that perhaps people here, if you're trying to slow people down and the point of that is to make people feel safer on the streets,

what happened there that perhaps we might take inspiration from? Well, Paris has really changed amazingly in the last, say, 20 years. I mean, when I started first going there, it was really a traffic-dominated city. We all remember what happened to Princess Diana on that expressway by the Sen. That expressway is now park. They close the expressway. They put it in a park. You can sit on benches.

They're kind of little beaches. They brought in all sorts of traffic calming measures. There are more bike lanes. There are more, there are all sorts of things to slow down traffic. So it, and it's changed the atmosphere of the city completely. I mean, it's just a much more pleasant place to be. It's a much more safe place to be. They brought in congestion, congestion limits.

They've closed some streets altogether to traffic, so they're just pedestrian streets. So, and cities all around the world are doing this. Even New York, again, a city. Even New York. New York. What do we think of when we think of New York with all the movies you see about New York? Traffic and honking. Hocings, rushing. But that's changed a lot. And Times Square is a pedestrian zone, most of it. They brought in all sorts of traffic calming measures, changed the shape of intersections, and now they too have a congestion charge. So this is part of an international trend. And Toronto is a big city, and we have several big cities in Canada.

We're all, we should really join this trend, I think. Do you have any sympathy for the drivers who are listening wherever they happen to be right now? Traffic is terrible ever. The joke in Toronto is that Toronto is an hour away from Toronto, that you just spend your time wasted in traffic. Do you have any sympathy for the drivers who say all the things you're talking about are just going to slow me down even more? I do. Look, traffic is really terrible in Toronto. And Vancouver and in Montreal.

Yeah, 100%. I drive a car myself. I get frustrated. I take parkside drive, the one you mentioned, with the speed cameras, and it's frustrating. Our highway system is not very well designed, not very well maintained. If you go to Europe, both things are better. The streets are better engineered. There's better signs and so on. So absolutely, let's do all we can to make traffic flow better. But let's also make sure that it's safe for the other people who share the streets. Marcus, thank you.

My pleasure. Marcus G. As a columnist for the Globe and Mail, he was here with me in our Toronto studio. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.