The Ford government studied tunnels under the 401 highway to relieve congestion, but silently filed unpublished work in 2021, years before Prime Minister Doug Ford announced his controversial plan for the mega project in 2024.
These findings are found in documents obtained by CBC News through a request for freedom of information. Informative notes for high government officials, dated February 19, 2025, present the history of work on the controversial proposal that Ford floated publicly for the first time last year.
“The project was arrested at the end of 2021 based on the government’s leadership,” wrote public officials in the informative note.
“The planning study was not announced, and no additional work has been produced in the project.”
Ford’s plan would see the tunnel built from Mississauga in the west to Scarborough in the east. In April, the government began the process of finding a company to complete a new feasibility study in tunnels or build a high highway above the current road. This study is not expected to be completed until 2027.
But the documents obtained by CBC News show that the government seems to have carried out its own analysis and silently filed that detailed work five years ago. The planning study has not been published and it is not clear why the work was stopped.
Public officials say in the documents that the study examined the options to compare “assumptions, findings, costs and technical design considerations.”
The progressive conservative leader, Doug Ford, said the province will build a tunnel under the 401 highway if it is re -elected. But as the LANE Harrison of CBC explains, an expert says that it could be the most expensive ontarium promise in the last ten years.
Pair of ministries, consultant prepared the ‘high level analysis’
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure Ontario worked in the study with the help of an external engineering consultant. “They performed a high level analysis in three tunnel concepts and two high road concepts,” says the note.
This work seems to have been promoted by a series of unpublished proposals to the Government between 2019 and 2021 of the companies that present plans to build a tunnel 401. The presentation of such proposals is not unusual, and Ontario created a portal of the framework of policies and presentations to optimize the process in 2019, according to the documents.
“(The proposals) received by the Government in 2019 led to an initial evaluation of the viability and benefits of a tunnel or a similar large -scale capital infrastructure project in the Highway 401 central corridor, which would add capacity in support of the decrease in congestion,” says the note.
The documents say that the AECON, CINTRA and ACCIONA companies submitted unpaid proposals. The note does not provide details about each individual plan, but says that one proposed two tunnels under 401 existing from highway 427 in the west to Bayview Avenue or Leslie Street in the east. One of the tunnel concepts consisted of two “large diameter, five lanes, two floors” tunnels, indicate the documents.
Crombie asks for ‘total transparency’
Neither Prime Minister Doug Ford nor the offices of the Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria responded to a request for comments.
The liberal leader of Ontario, Bonnie Crombie, is asking the Government to publish all reports in the tunnel. The inhabitants of Ontario must be able to evaluate the merits of what could be the most expensive infrastructure project in the history of the province if it advances, he said.
“I would like to know what the economic benefits are,” he said.
“I would like to know what the environmental impacts would be. Will it meet the objective of reducing traffic and stagnation?”
Crombie said it is skeptical that the tunnel would cut the congestion on the road. It is possible that the government filed work in 2021 because public officials found that the mega project was not feasible, he said.
“That is why we ask full transparency and an opportunity to see the feasibility study,” he said.
Toronto is obtaining a new “traffic tsar” to supervise the congestion around the city. Mayor Olivia Chow spoke with CBC’s metropolitan morning about what measures the city is taking to address congestion and stagnation.
The critic demands the liberation of the highway. 401 Tunnel reports
The NDP transport and infrastructure criticism, Jennifer French, said the Ford government must be transparent about what you already know about the cost and viability of the tunnel.
“This only speaks of the fact that everything the government does, whether infrastructure projects, transport projects, we are always the last to meet,” he said.
“If the prime minister is based on the report, or if he ignores the report, I would like to know.”
The investigation of unplayed proposals is very challenging for governments, said Matti Siestycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute of the University of Toronto. He is not surprised that after receiving the three private sector plans, that the Government would like to work in its own tunnel analysis 401.
“Some of them are complete plans of the brain of the hair, and some have a real core,” he generally said about unplayed proposals. “It is very complicated and challenging that governments examine them and try to discover the noise signal.”
Siemiatycki said that tunnel 401 could take decades to build and cost tens of billions of dollars. For that reason, the Government must publish most of its viability work as possible, including information in the unre requested proposals that are not owning for companies, he said.
That also includes the release of the current feasibility study planned by the province when completed, he added.
“It must be studied independently and impartially by technical experts, and that is what is happening,” he said. “The important thing now is that this study is carried out and then released, and so that we can all see what it says.”
