Ontario

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the province is planning to increase speed limits on 400-series highways across the province.

The government increased speed limits from 100 km/h to 110 km/h on six sections of provincial highways in 2022 after several successful pilot programs that first began in 2019.

Earlier this year, the province raised the speed limit on 10 more sections of highways across the province, including a 70-kilometre stretch of Highway 416 from Highway 401 to Ottawa.

Ford said Wednesday that he had directed Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria to raise the speed limit to 110 km/h on all 400-series highways “where it is safe to do so.”

Here are 5 other steps we can take to ensure our morning commutes are an absolute breeze, and we don’t need to (swallows vomit) take transit or (dry heaves) ride a bike.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/29724681

Bonne fête des franco-ontariennes et franco-ontariens!

L’origine de cette journée remonte au 25 septembre 1975, date à laquelle le drapeau franco-ontarien a été levé pour la première fois à l’Université de Sudbury. Conçu par Gaétan Gervais et Michel Dupuis, ce drapeau est rapidement devenu un puissant symbole d’identité pour les Franco-Ontariens. Ses couleurs et ses symboles racontent l’histoire et l’environnement de cette communauté : le vert représente les forêts d’été du Nord de l’Ontario, tandis que le blanc évoque les hivers enneigés. La fleur de lys rappelle les racines françaises, et le trille blanc, fleur emblématique de l’Ontario, souligne l’appartenance à cette province.

Ontario is proposing to further expand pharmacists' scope of practice by adding to the list of minor ailments they can assess, allowing them to administer more vaccines and order some lab tests.

'Pharmacists are not doctors,' OMA says But doctors are pushing back on the scope expansions.

"The bottom line here is that pharmacists are not doctors," said Dr. Dominik Nowak, president of the Ontario Medical Association. "Doctors are trained for years and thousands of hours to diagnose and treat conditions."

So why, years after the Premier promised legal reforms that would deliver “more homes faster” and 1.5 million net new homes by 2030, is the housing shortage even worse? Why are housing starts actually down, year over year? It’s because rather than ending restrictions on midrise housing and slamming the brakes on sprawl and highway schemes that squander construction, Ontario’s changes to land use planning, environmental and transportation laws and policies have done the opposite.

Soon after Premier Doug Ford took office, his government began to dismantle even the modest measures the previous government had taken to promote more efficient housing construction.

Despite calls from housing and environmental experts across the political spectrum — and its own housing task force — to scrap outdated rules such as minimum parking requirements and to permit mid-rise housing on major streets throughout existing residential neighbourhoods, Ford intervened. He personally blocked efforts to legalize even 4-storey “4-plex” apartment buildings.

In recent months, as his government’s failure on housing has become more obvious, Ford has tried to pass the buck by blaming everyone from immigrants to the Bank of Canada. What he glosses over is that the housing market could easily have adapted to population and rate changes, but has instead turned the challenge of high interest rates and the opportunity of a growing population into a housing crisis by willfully sabotaging the solutions.